Vintage Synth Explorer

Sequential Circuits • Prophet 5

One of the first fully programmable polyphonic analog synths, the Prophet 5 is the most classic synthesizer of the eighties! It is capable of a delightful analog sound unique to Sequential's Prophet series in which the P5 was King! Five voice polyphony - two oscillators per voice and a white noise generator. The analog filters, envelope and LFO all sound great and are extremely flexible. The P5 had patch memory storage as well, which scanned and memorized every knob setting for storing and recalling your sounds - a desperately needed feature at the time!

The P5 lacked MIDI (a feature that came later on the P5 spin-off, the Prophet 600). But it is still loved even today for its great string sounds, analog effects, and punchy analog basses. Unfortunately the P5 is not immune to the dark side of vintage synths - it has its fair share of analog synth problems such as unstable tuning, it's difficult to repair, lacks MIDI, etc.

There are basically three versions of the Prophet 5:

Rev 1 P5s are pretty unreliable, if you find one; they're also quite rare. These were all hand-assembled in the 'garage stage' of the company.

Rev 2 uses SSM chips, and has some differences in its control logic capabilities from the final version. It can't be retrofitted for MIDI, but is considered by most to be the better-sounding of the two 'common' P5s.

Rev 3 is the final version, and subsequent Rev 3.1, Rev 3.2 and Rev 3.3 each are capable of taking a MIDI retrofit. They're also capable of microtonal tuning. The audio quality of the Rev 3 is different, however, as it uses Curtis chips instead of Rev 2's SSMs; many people think the Rev 3 units sound 'thinner'. The Rev 3, however, is considered the most reliable of all of the different versions and they had 120 memory patches.

The legendary Prophet 10 is essentially two Prophet 5 circuits stacked together for 10 fat voices of analog girth! The P5 has been used by Kraftwerk, Duran Duran, No Doubt, Depeche Mode, Vince Clarke, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Gary Numan, Thomas Dolby, New Order, Prodigy, INXS, The Cars, Phil Collins, Richard Barbieri, Hall & Oates, Jean-Michel Jarre, Sneaker Pimps, Steely Dan, Kitaro, Level 42, the Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys, Vangelis, George Duke, filmmaker/composer John Carpenter and many more.

From Native Instruments comes the amazing new Pro-Five and Pro-52 VST Plug-In software emulators of the Prophet 5. Read more about it!

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Posting Rules: Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

 

arpman

Posted 357 days ago

And The Cars used one on Let's Go, The Candy-O album, and A LOT on Panorama. Trust me, I know Greg Hawkes, and he told me ;)

Thomas kenny

Posted 365 days ago

I've always fancied one of those prophet 5 synthersizer's when I first seen one of those polyphonic synths played by pop musician's back in 1980 so while I read on the melody maker early in 1983 & looked at the bargain in the keyboard shops it costed around £2,000 it's a very expansive model & so was the Jupiter 8 model & I also had a demonstration on the prophet 5 early in 1983 whilst travelling to Rod argent's keyboard shop in worcester.

Seth C Triggs

Posted 376 days ago

Lyle Mays used a Prophet 5 from the late 70s through the early 1980s. It was primarily used for those space-like effects on such songs as As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls.

Eus

Posted 436 days ago

My all time favourite synth.
Will never ever sell it.

lf0

Posted 438 days ago

This synth features in the book analogue preservation here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j89E lwmpw0Y

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