Prophet 5, le retour

Picked mine up today at RobotSpeak in San Francisco (great guys).

Went with the 5 rather than the 10 because I kind of like the sound of the voice stealing with such a thick beast - no regrets having now played it for several hours. But that's just my preference.

First reactions:

- It is bigger than I had appreciated and I kind of love it - no need for doll fingers to grab the knob you want and it just invites tweaking (and legit being able to read a patch by eye if you use the panel mode). From the back, on the stand with my OB-6, it looks pretty massive, but who cares - the UI is really inviting. Definitely not too big to gig with in my opinion but bigger than the P-6 and OB-6 for sure (and I kinda think this synth is more intended for the studio, particularly given its lack of any FX - which is fine if you use it to record).

- Seems built like a tank as we all had hoped. All wood and metal, everything tight. Printing is all screened onto the metal rather than a plastic overlay. Wish it had the big silver badges on the back like the original but they look great on the front and the top. The wood is lovely.

- I have never played the original but my first synth was a SC Prophet-600 back in the day. Without a doubt, this sounds way closer to vintage stuff than the other HW I have (Prophet-6, OB-6, Moog Sub-37, Elektron Analog 4) or any soft synth I have (Diva, etc...). It just has that organic, often (but not always) thick thing. As others have said above, there is a richness to the midrange that is intense - so intense, that I could see for modern production that some more aggressive EQ might be needed - but it also can do some things that my more modern synths can't.

- Played along with some Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode (the early stuff) while getting to know it tonight and it just slotted in seamlessly. Playing something like the Blade Runner soundtrack on preset 118 made me feel like I had a CS-80 under my fingers (never played one - surely if I had I wouldn't think that but I haven't). This synth, with its more limited functions relative to other modern synths, would be a bummer if it didn't have the sound but it does. I compared to my P6 and OB6 several times and frankly there were a few times they could sound close. The P6 and OB6 could definitely do some things the P5 couldn't and vice versa - and where the P5 stood out (which was most of the time) was that vintage thing. But that vintage thing is not a thing I get from any other piece of modern hardware or any soft synth I've played - I could not stop playing this thing for about 4 hours after I set it up. It kept taking me out of the sounds of 2020 in a really cool way - nostalgic but also just different to what stuff often sounds like today. Rawer, bigger at times and more natural (less computerized).

- The *only* feature request I have is it would be AMAZING if there could be a way of syncing the LFO to MIDI. I'm cool if we never get that but for sounds where the LFO is core to the sound, it's frankly something I've taken for granted for years and it hadn't occurred to me that the P5 wouldn't have that (not a surprise in retrospect but kind of a surprise nonetheless).

Of course I was pretty wrapped up in what a bummer this is at first, but I will admit I (rather recklessly) did play it for a few minutes the first time I powered it up. And that fact is making it all the more of a bummer because I was pretty blown away. I have a P6 (just sold and about to box up to ship out actually), OB6, several other cheaper analogs, a couple random vintage analogs, and I've owned numerous others over the 17 or so years of my analog synth journey. And in those few minutes it was immediately clear that this is one of the most expressive (this of course being a very fluffy and subjective descriptor, so I mean "expressive to me") experiences I've ever had with an instrument.

That may be a bit hyperbolic based on a few minutes plus my excitement plus my self justifying of spending this much money on something. But in a few minutes of tweaking I was immediately generating potential song ideas, and what more could I possibly ask for? It sounds like the instrument I wanted it to be. The P6 might be similar, but it had a very distinctly different feel and tone, and it was exactly the feel and tone I was looking for. The basic oscillator tones are beautiful noticeably lacking that "hard" and bright modern analog thing, the filter is beautiful, the modulation is beautiful and less thump-y than the P6 and OB6, the Vintage knob loosens things up very musically, and it just feels like a brilliantly well designed instrument. Both the modulation and poly mod sections responded in a more intuitive (again, to me) and musical way than what I'm used to from the P6 and OB6. Wonderfully familiar in that I've heard this thing on countless albums but also excitingly new in that I've never before been able to explore these sounds for myself. I've never played an original P5 before, but my gut reaction is that this is what I would want one to sound like. It's what I wanted the P6 to sound like (not to knock it because it's great in its own right, but it is different and this P5 is different in a way I strongly prefer).

In short, I'm imagining folks are going to be really happy with these.