Vintage Synth Explorer

Sequential Circuits • ProphetVS

(click to enlarge)

Here's a very cool keyboard from Sequential. Notice the joystick for controlling your sound modelling. The Prophet VS uses Vector Synthesis as its revolutionary new means of sound creation. It uses a total of four oscillators per voice with 127 waveforms (32 user) and dynamic waveform crossfading via the joystick. This was Sequential's first digital synth, and it was also their final synth unfortunately. But after Sequential was gone, Vector Synthesis technology went into the popular Korg Wavestation and Yamaha's SY-22 and TG-33.

Pictured above is the common rackmount version of the PVS. The ProphetVS is still a very sought after instrument because it has an incredible range of sounds! Its only problem is that there's practically nobody left that can fix it if something went wrong. It is used by Brian Eno, Trent Reznor, Apollo 440, Depeche Mode, Vince Clarke, Kraftwerk, Vangelis, Erasure and filmmaker/composer John Carpenter.

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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.

 

Nick Esposito

Posted 19 days ago

Spacetime Continuum also used a Prophet-VS on their album Sea Biscuit. I bet a lot of the cool sounds on that album came from this beast!

Adolf hilter

Posted 28 days ago

Any decent tech can fix it, its no more problematic then any other synth, however whats really problematic is to find replacement chips!
particularely the custom digital and the CEM based sample hold IC! :)

JOE

Posted 59 days ago

love this synth to bits but im sorry as i have to say that its not as classy as the roland d50.the roland d50 with voice crystals keith emmerson sound rom blows the vs away.it is my second favourite digital synth but its no d50.

Christian

Posted 90 days ago

Rush used two of these on the Hold Your Fire tour.... tour book per Geddy's equipment list.

Joerg

Posted 127 days ago

My favorite synth next to my PPG Wave 2.2 (for the 8 bit wavetables) it is extremely under rated, better than the prophet 5 if you ask me, more sonic characteristics and much easier to get very experimental and unique sounds from. Shawn is right though, the lack of 5530 chips make this a hard fix now than wine country take 3 months to get back to your emails. Find a good tech if you buy one of the these!

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