Sequential Prophet Rev2 Synthesizer 8 Voice

I thought that given the choice of analog versus digital and monophonic verses polyphonic that an analog polyphonic synth would be the best of all possible options. And maybe it is for you. I don't think I fully appreciated the limitations of analog subtractive synthesis, coming from the softsynth realm, when I purchased a used Rev2 from my local GC. The quality of the instrument was a mixture of impressive and frustrating. For one thing there are 512 factory presets... and they are arranged ***randomly***. I went through probably 400 of them and I could not discern any patterns. In fact, most of my (few months) time owning the instrument was spent working through the 4 banks of 128 patches taking notes/trying to form a system of organization. I would recommend putting some thought into this ahead of time so you know what is going to work for you. (e.g. It is not easy to audition voices if you have to scroll through hundreds of voices to move between them) Some of the knobs were very touchy (including the 'Program' knob) so just brushing against them would change the program. Also your edits are deleted as soon as the program changes - and when you are saving your edited program all you see is for example (U2P01) which would be "User Bank 2, Program 1" - so hope you don't have anything there which you don't want to save over. This leads to needing a way to keep track, outside of the synth, of your user Programs to not save over your stuff. An onboard EQ would be hugely advantageous, as the levels vary widely between patches and I found myself constantly fiddling with the 3-band on my mixer. The keyboard itself felt great. Velocity, responsiveness, aftertouch. All of it. I guess bottomline is the that it sounded and felt great but the user interface was such a huge turn off (as well as the sounds being limited for my personal taste)- I traded it in for a japanese-brand digital fm synth.

The feeling of a Dave Smith instrument can never truly be stated until you have one right in front of you. The 16 Voices on the Rev2 offer an incredibly warm and boisterous tone. You can create your own patches or purchase some of the many DIY patch kits that are circulating on the web. Making your own sounds is fun, and you can quickly learn the synthesis workflow by trying to mirror iconic sounds used on your favorite songs.

I'm planning to use this to augment my songwriting. Every patch is pure nostalgia and I love the intuitive programming and modulation

It's a synthesizer by Dave Smith. The quality of his instruments is well known. The Prophet Rev2 is another one his great synths

The ability to split and stack layers makes it very fun to play, the modulation capacity and stacking sounds amazing. Being able to program a unique sequence per layer, and play on top of those, is amazing. Sounds incomparably richer and more nuanced than any YouTube demo showed; I was very skeptical from YouTube video demos, but in person this sounds beautiful.

The Prophet Rev 2 is sweet. I compared this to the Prophet 6 and OB6, they all sound very similar. The rev 2 has 61 keys, split/stack and the great mod matrix and cost 1/2 as much.