So many musicians were very happy to see Arturia release a virtual software version of the Prophet 5 and Prophet VS known as the Prophet V. Original Prophets still command a high price and when one gets offered for sale it usually sells for a least $1000. I can't tell you how many times I had to ship it out to Sequential to be repaired, but the staff at Sequential got to know me so well that they practically gave me a new Prophet 2000 when it was released just to make up for all the problems that I had with the Rev 1 - Prophet 5! Sometimes it came back on, sometimes not. As soon as the unit heated up it would turn off. It had an amazing sound, but never worked right due to the unreliable SSM oscillator and filter chips installed in it. The first 100 were beta machines and taken by employes and friends from Sequential Circuits.

I bought a used Revision 1 in 1979 that had serial number #101 - which was in fact the very first Prophet 5 offered for sale to the public. The hybrid of digital and analogue helped make the Prophet VS sound unique. Four of these waveforms are assigned to the oscillator slots and they are then processed by an analogue signal path, with low-pass filters based on the Curtis chips the same that were used in the Prophet 5. The Prophet VS included 96 waveforms which were all 12-bit samples. It uses a total of four oscillators per voice with 127 waveforms (32 user) and waveform crossfading using the joystick.

The VS used Vector Synthesis as its revolutionary new means of sound creation. Perhaps their most innovative instrument - and one of my favorite synths, turned out to be one of their last products produced, The Prophet VS. It's been used by everyone from Peter Gabriel to Philip Glass and is one of the true classic synths that came out of the 70's. Very primitive by todays standards, but back in the day it was a big deal. That meant that you could actually store sounds in the synths memory and recall them with the push of a button. Their first synthesizer, the Prophet-5 was the first programmable synth. Sequential Circuits created many innovative products during their ten year run from 1977 to 1987.

Arturia v collection 5 for sale