Sequential synth update#

Sequential synth update#

They launched the Prophet-6, a re-creation and update of the Prophet-5, under the Sequential name. Sequential is an American synthesizer company founded in 1974 as Sequential Circuits by Dave Smith. In 2015, DSI acquired the rights to the Sequential Circuits name and trademarks. Smith launched a new synthesizer manufacturing company, Dave Smith Instruments, in 2002. Smith and Kakehashi received Grammy awards in 2013 for their work on MIDI. In 1982, Sequential's Prophet-600 became one of the two first synth models to be factory-equipped with MIDI, along with Roland's JX3P. A chance meeting between Smith and Roland's Ikutaro Kakehashi led to the formation of a trade group that developed the original MIDI standard. The company had developed a proprietary remote control bus for the Prophet-5, as had Roland for its products of that era. The assignment settings for the various parameters are listed in the center of the front. It is not fun to program, there is only one knob and you need to assign the parameter you wish to adjust to this knob. It has typical Sequential sounds in an analog six oscillator, six voice synth. Sequential was instrumental in the development of MIDI. The Six-Trak is Sequential's beginner synth. The group developed the Korg Wavestation, which was basically a re-creation of the Prophet VS with some improvements. Later, Yamaha assigned them to do projects for Korg, which Yamaha owned at the time. Wine Country has been offering parts and service for vintage Sequential Circuits synths for many years, but their parts stock is now nearly depleted.Ī team of engineers led by Smith went to work for Yamaha after the acquisition of Sequential They designed the SY22 and TG33 vector synths for Yamaha. They sold the remaining stock, along with technical documentation and software, to Wine Country Productions. In December of that year, Yamaha acquired the company and shut down its production. The Prophet VS was released just months before the company collapsed in 1987.

The company's last product was the Prophet VS, the first synth to use the vector synthesis concept. These were well-liked by the performers who bought them, but they were priced higher than the comparable models from E-mu Systems, and sales were slow. In the mid-'80s, the company delved into samplers, with the Prophet 20. The high point of this period was probably the Prophet-T8, an eight-voice synth with a piano-weighted keyboard with polyphonic aftertouch. In the meantime, the company released a variety of variations on the Prophet-5 theme, both polyphonic and monophonic. The Prophet-5 dominated the market for polyphonic synthesizers until 1983. In the meantime, they were working on the ground-breaking Prophet-5, which they released in 1978. They released a sequencer, the Model 700, that year.

The founders were Dave Smith and John Bowen on the technical side, and Barb Fairhurst taking care of the business side of the operation. Sequential Circuits (also known as Sequential or SCI) was a synth manufacturer formed in 1977.