Sequential Circuits
Long long ago in the early 80’s we (Garry Bradbury and myself) borrowed a Pro-1 from our friend John Blades. American keyboards have always been relatively expensive so this was a bit of tyre kicking before a potentially major purchase. Our main interest was the built in sequencer, also the two (TWO!) oscillators where my Kawai 100F and Roland SH-1 only had one. We recorded a track which you can hear at the bottom of the page – the main riff is the Pro-1… but…
We weren’t that excited by the sound I got from the Prophet and eventually decided to filter it through the much more exotic Kawai, which added all the wonderful sizzling filter effects you hear on the final sequence. We would have loved to have directly sequenced the Kawai instead, but did not find out until years later that the control voltage input is also a gate – because Kawai.
A couple of other tracks followed but the Pro-1 didn’t make a mark and went back to John with much thanks. We went back to Japanese keys with a big stack of Korg MS.
I did try a Dave Smith Mopho at one point, but I felt its lifespan would be short lived.
Behringer
When the remake first arrived I was a little curious, knowing for example that Kraftwerk (and many others) had worked extensively with the Pro-5 and hearing good sizzle come out of Sequential keys that we’d obviously missed. I’m much more experienced than I was back then. Sure, there’s been plenty of Prophet V emulations in software, and I’m sure they’re getting closer and closer to the sound of ‘the real thing’. But it’s the hardware that needed a second listen some 40 years later. Plus – discount sale.
I know it’s Behringer and a clone and all that – I placed a bet that it fell somewhere in the cloud of different sounding circuits on all the aging originals.
Knobs
The machine arrives with all the knobs turned to zero. Fortunately it’s a traditional layout, apart from a patch bay at the left which needs to be carefully nulled before you tweak a blank slate. There’s USB or MIDI in, mono audio cable out. A bunch of CV ports up top. The basic sound is a simple stack of waveforms, there’s not much warble – more DCO than VCO.
First test, patch Osc B to modulate the filter frequency, resonance way up – and there it is, the Prophet sizzle sound. Sync on – yes, here’s the meat of American keyboards, the sync sweep is well done. Switch Osc B to KYBD OFF, then to LO FREQ and combine this with the LFO to get two modulations at once. Patch cable the audio out to audio in – it becomes sullen, not angry, so not quite like the Moog. Patch CV control from Hydrasynth – works OK.
So the expected twists and turns act as you would hope. This is good. The sequencers work once you watch a video of how to do it, there being not much help in the manual. Haven’t yet tried to synchronise with an external source – no matter I’d just use MIDI anyway.
Thinking back to our early recordings I’m sure I could now get the sound I wanted on the Pro-1. So many synthesisers have borrowed these techniques over the years that they’ve become part of our basic language. You likely can do the same on whatever you are using now, but it doesn’t mean it’ll be quite like this.
It’s not as wild as the Kawai, and more musical. The build is pretty good for the price (better than the original!) and the twiddling is pleasurable. Even if you are a software user and only use a bit of occasional hardware this might be a good idea. But then a Bass Station 2 can do all this just as well and has the benefit of decades of development. It comes down to a question of do you want (a remake of) the original thing? Or do you want the work of an original designer?