Beautiful Prophet 5 and a few free samples

[Scot Solida]

Today, the delivery man came to the door bearing my newly serviced Prophet 5. I sent it off to Analogics, where Wes Taggart did massive amounts of work on it. Before I sent it, it was in dire shape: oscillator 1 didn't track at all, and the power supply was screwy. After a few minutes of use, it would ditch all of its programs and reset the parameters to "full on". In addition, the pitch and mod wheel assembly was a mess, and the keys were in bad shape. The top octave didn't play and the bushings were shot. After some time with Mr. Taggart, the Prophet is working like new, and looking great, thanks to the beautiful custom curly maple cabinet Wes built for it:



As you can see, the Prophet 5 now makes my other synths look, well, ugly!

Of course, none of this hard work and expense would be worth a damn if it didn't sound fantastic, and it does! Feel free to avail yourselves of the following multisampled unison patch I made with it:

www.olscratchrecordings.com/Sounds/P5Samples.zip

www.olscratchrecordings.com/Sounds/P5Looped.zip

The first set consists of un looped samples, with their natural release. The second set is the same samples, but looped and truncated. All of them have the root notes embedded into the files, though they are also named in the file names. I sampled every C and F#. They are, like the Prophet itself, mono samples...

It's obvious from the samples and the pic that Mr. Taggart is the service tech for these old beasties. His knowledge and love for vintage synths is unmatched. He'll be getting my Minimoog next (there isn't as much wrong with the Mini, it just needs some minor stuff...but I want the same maple cabinet on it, so off it goes!). If you have any old synths in need of servicing, I urge you to check out www.analogics.org. You aint gonna find a more dedicated tech.

[Spratman]

Hello Scot.

What a beautiful box of tricks eh? To be honest it's the sound of the Prophet that has always attracted me, not the asthetics. I have thought about buying one a few times, but the cost of a fully functional P5 has been a bit beyond me (the last one I saw in good condition was about $5k). I was pondering what you thought about the reliability of the things too? I somewhat suspect if I could find one for a reasonable price it might be rather costly to keep overall. Because of this, I've been thinking about buying a software P5 of late, but I'm not entirely sure which one is the best to get at this time.

There seems to be quite a thriving business out there at the moment when it comes to people modding synths, changing their surfaces, replacing knobs and panels. It's a pity in some respects that the numbers of working examples of some of the instruments is always going to be on the decline though! Still, if you're going to have a synth in your studio and it's going to take up a fair amount of space it might as well look great too! I'm sure I can find a few purists that would tell you you've created an abomination of sorts though!;)

Would you mind telling us which rev your Prophet is?

Thank you for the samples.

Yet again - it's a nice synth. Enjoy your P5!

Spratman

[Vonbrucken]

thanks for the kind samples

[Scot Solida]

Hello Scot.

I somewhat suspect if I could find one for a reasonable price it might be rather costly to keep overall. Because of this, I've been thinking about buying a software P5 of late, but I'm not entirely sure which one is the best to get at this time.

There seems to be quite a thriving business out there at the moment when it comes to people modding synths, changing their surfaces, replacing knobs and panels. It's a pity in some respects that the numbers of working examples of some of the instruments is always going to be on the decline though! Still, if you're going to have a synth in your studio and it's going to take up a fair amount of space it might as well look great too! I'm sure I can find a few purists that would tell you you've created an abomination of sorts though!;)

Would you mind telling us which rev your Prophet is?



Spratman

It's a Rev 3.2. I don't think I could handle the upkeep of an older Rev, even if I could find one. And that's the thing. These old synths are getting older by the minute. They can be quite expensive to keep up, though for some people and some synths, it's worth it. I used to do the maintenance myself, but as the instruments get older, the problems can become more daunting, especially an instrument with digital functions such as a Prophet. The P5 was the first one I sent out to Analogics for servicing, and I got back way more than I paid for from Wes.

And yeah, I've already caught some flack from "purists" who were miffed by the fact that I had Wes put on a "non-standard" cabinet. Screw 'em. I think it looks beautiful.

[aMUSEd]

I've never played a real Prophet 5 (though I do have John Bowen's software replica though which I believe comes pretty close and also the Creamware version based on a different Rev) but I think it has a lovely and very musical sound. It does look gorgeous too.

[aMUSEd]

Hello Scot.

What a beautiful box of tricks eh? To be honest it's the sound of the Prophet that has always attracted me, not the asthetics. I have thought about buying one a few times, but the cost of a fully functional P5 has been a bit beyond me (the last one I saw in good condition was about $5k). I was pondering what you thought about the reliability of the things too? I somewhat suspect if I could find one for a reasonable price it might be rather costly to keep overall. Because of this, I've been thinking about buying a software P5 of late, but I'm not entirely sure which one is the best to get at this time.

Maybe one of the Scope versions? There are several versions made for Scope (Creamware) cards including one made by Scope based on the Rev 2 (Pro 12) and several variations made by John Bowen (formerly of Sequential) - one of these is a straight copy of a Rev 3, one is the same but with additional semi modular capabilities and the third has semi modular and hybrid capabilities with the ability to use digital Waldorf wavetable oscs as well as analog ones (both of these are still compatible with the basic version's patches). All of these run as standalone and VSTi softsynths using the DSP for power.

There's also the ASB version made by Scope which has the same Pro 12 as the card version but built into a dedicated hardware box (laid out like a Prophet replica) with additional and faster DSP - good if you don't want to install a new card and it still runs as a standalone/VSTi softsynth too.

They all sound wonderful.

[Scot Solida]

I've never played a real Prophet 5 (though I do have John Bowen's software replica though which I believe comes pretty close and also the Creamware version based on a different Rev) but I think it has a lovely and very musical sound. It does look gorgeous too.

The Prophet 5 was really a classy looking and sounding instrument. Everything was top-quality. The knobs feel good, the switches are substantial and the sound is just lush as hell. It aint as "big" sounding as a few of the synths that followed it, but it isn't thin, either. Though the signal path more closely resembles an Odyssey than a Minimoog, the overall sound seems closer to the Moog than the ARP to my ears. It doesn't have quite the same oomph in the lower mids that the Minimoog has, but it comes closer than just about any other synth in my studio, though it doesn't sacrifice its own personaility in the process (the Polymod section ensures that it'll always have plenty of that).

[Scot Solida]

There's also the ASB version made by Scope which has the same Pro 12 as the card version but built into a dedicated hardware box (laid out like a Prophet replica) with additional and faster DSP - good if you don't want to install a new card and it still runs as a standalone/VSTi softsynth too.

They all sound wonderful.

I never tried out the ASB version of the P5, but they did a pretty good job with the Minimax. I thought that was capable of some convincing Mini sounds.

[Spratman]

Amused,

It kind of bothers me a little that Creamware is still doing just plain PCI, particularly given the cost. I also kind of ponder about the voice aspect of using Creamware dsp's, and the whole "using it with my other vsts" thing, in the past I've seen a lot of complaints about attempts to do this.

Does the Pro12 ASB hardware box run as a vsti?? (and is it one instance only?)

There's also the Arturia Prophet 5 (not heard a lot about it, and can't demo it ) and the NI one - which I played with a year or so ago, it's really nice, but I'm not entirely convinced...

There are I suspect still a few advantages to the real thing. Those hard synch and screaming lead type sounds you can make with a P5 are really nice.....

Spratman

[aMUSEd]

I'm not impressed with the Arturia one (which I also own) so far but you can certainly get some good hard sync sounds with the Scope ones. The Scope cards certainly could do with updating but I guess that isn't so easy if you're tied to a particular chipset - DSP has it's strengths and weaknesses. However the ASB is supposed to be good and it has more DSP than the basic Scope card (though the Prophet emulations don't use as much power as the Minimax one does). afaik it does have a VSTi version but I'm not certain about instances etc but then with the original Prophet there's only one instance isn't there. It's a compromise between hardware and software but I think its the best you'll get in terms of sound short of paying full whack for a second hand original and it won't go out of tune or need as much maintenance.

Sorry Scot - didn't mean to divert the thread from your lovely bit of kit