Sequential Circuits Pro-One

The Prophet-5 was IT in 1977, but at $5K, who could afford one? Suddenly Sequential put out its baby brother, the Pro-One. For $425 you got not a Prophet 5, but at least the "voice of the prophet." Positively religious!

And look at all those knobs! This was synth 101. Here I could map out my synthesizer voices clearly, every parameter right in front of me. It had a couple of oscillators so you could tune them to an interval and get a "chord" out of it. This was the real deal. No presets? No voice memory? Who knew that was a problem back then!

This synth could make a mechanical clang, a bouncy bass, a string sound, a tornado, a wasps nest wind, an organ sound, whatever, and had many options for routing modulation. Play a clean tone then turn up the mod wheel and the sound would fly out warped, twisted and spinning. A pair of 20 step sequencers I made good use of: one for verse, one for chorus. You could sync the clock to a tape click and after a few bounces on the old 4-track, things really started to cook. And let's not forget the arppegiator!

O.k., you can tell I still love this. I still want this one. So why did I get rid of it? Well, I needed the money for something else. And that was polyphony. This synth didn't have it and mulyi tracking layers and layers on a 4-track got tedious. I sold my Pro-One for pretty much what I paid for it. Someone got a great synth, and got a myself a Korg Poly Six.