A truly
monstrous (both for its size and sound) vintage analog synthesizer. Essentially two
Prophet-5:s stacked together to form a 10-
voice polyphonic synthesizer with two
oscillators per voice.
There are three
different revisions of the Prophet-10.
Version 1
Released in
1978, the first version was simply a 10-voice
Prophet-5. The added
hardware caused
serious overheating problems for the
unit, since the original P5
case couldn't handle the
heat created by the large number of
chips.
Most of the units vere
recalled and
transformed into normal P5:s by removing the extra voice hardware.
Version 2
The
second attempt in
1979 came with a larger
chassis to
defeat the
heating problems. It also featured a two-row 122-key
keyboard.
The
SSM chips used in the
Prophet-5s sounded good but were considered too
unstable. After three
prototypes of the second P10 version were
built,
Sequential Circuits started using
CEM chips from
Curtis ElectroMusic Specialities:
CEM 3340 as the
VCO and
CEM 3320 as the
VCF.
Although the Curtis hardware was more
stable, its sound was supposedly
inferior to the previous
manufacturer. This makes the three SSM prototypes the most sought after pieces of
SC equipment out there.
Version 3
The
final Prophet-10 model was released in
1980. The
architechture is quite similar to the 3rd revision of
Prophet-5 with two
VCO:s per voice and 32
user programmable patches.
The two 61-key keyboards can be
configured to the following modes:
An
optional 6-
track sequencer could also be
purchased.
Only a CV/Gate
interface is featured, but
MIDI retrofit kits are available and
recommended.
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