Sequential Circuits Prophet 5

The Prophet 5 was the first truly programmable polyphonic synthesizer. It is both a classic historically and sonically, and appeared on a massive load of hits in the early 80’s.

The Prophet 5 now a days is put into two camps: the Rev 2 and the Rev 3.

Factually speaking, the Rev 3 is the actual classic, as it appeared on all of the classic Prophet 5 hits for the most part, and most musicians at the time traded in their Rev 2’s for the Rev 3. The Rev 2 utilized SSM chips, and was very unstable, while the Rev 3 sported CEM chips, and was piles more reliable.

Sonically, they are a tad different, and the Rev 2 is a bit harder to use because of it’s edit panel. Thanks to websites like Gearslutz and muffwiggler, the Rev 2 has gained a reputation as being “warmer” and “more organic”. While we can substantiate these claims by acknowledging that they are indeed slightly different sounding, we still recommend the Rev 3 for the majority of your sessions.

But, we do have both revisions available for rent. The Rev 3 has midi, and we will not be adding midi to our Rev 2, for the simple reason that they crash all the time, and adding in a kenton kit would just exacerbate that.