New Sequential Prophet-5 & Prophet-10 Hardware Issue

PROPHET 5 (VINTAGE VS REISSUE ) REV 4 COMPARISON - Neon Nights: 1980s Music Production

Update: post fix video here.

This one is in via an anoymous reader. Apparently the new Sequential Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 lack the higher frequencies found in the original, as can be heard in the comparison video above. An interesting side note is something similar happened with the original Minimoog Voyager as well. It lacked the bite of the original Minimoog. There was a modification for it that came later. I actually have a signature edition Voyager, and opted to keep it as is, as I wanted to keep it true to Bob Moog's initial design. Different synth and different history though...

The following is a from Carson Day of Sequential:

"First off, thank you all for your patience as we get to the bottom of the issue. After our group audio analysis yesterday, I forwarded the info to Dave. We worked last night and most of today determining the cause of the fault and means to fix it. I've pasted a public note from Dave below.

'As some users have noticed, there is a drop in high frequencies on the current units in the field. I checked into it yesterday, and I’m highly embarrassed to say that we screwed up. Short story is there are some capacitors that were not meant to be installed, but did in fact get installed, causing the frequency drop.

A fair question would be “how did we not notice this?” This turns out to be due to my ears lacking any high end; too many Yardbirds, Who, Cream etc. concerts in the ‘60s. I picked up serial #1 on October 1st, and it sounded great to me! Since then, we’ve shipped every unit we’ve made because we have a huge backlog. And, with everyone working at home due to the pandemic, no one else played a production unit except me.

Those are just excuses; the real issue is that units in the field need to be corrected. Fortunately, it’s a fairly easy mod if you have access to a soldering iron, or a service center nearby. Two capacitors need to be removed; that’s it.
We will happily swap boards if that is preferred, or swap entire units. We will do whatever is required to make things right.

This affects serial numbers 1 to 195 on Prophet 5s, and 1 to 159 on Prophet 10s.
I owe everyone a deep apology for this; it’s not how we normally work, and I’m really sorry this fell through the cracks. Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,
Dave Smith'

I would like to also apologize for any inconvenience and frustration this has caused any of you. While yesterday was stressful, hectic, and overwhelming, I'm glad that we could all work together to better qualify the described problem.

Rest assured that we will make sure to make this right at no cost to owners whom purchased any units within the noted serial ranges.

Carson Day
Sequential LLC"

And a note on the capacitors in question:

"We'll have documentation available to those who feel comfortable removing the caps themselves. It's really quite easy and takes less than a minute to perform with a SMT hot air gun. To get into the synth, unscrew the wood ends, unscrew the 3 screws in each end which connect to the top panel metal work, and lift the top panel up. It is hinged at the rear with a lanyard so it will stay open on its own. Images of the capacitors to remove from the main board are attached."