REV-2: HISTORY

Back in the day (2010) I had the Prophet 600. I played it alongside my other vintage synths like Polysix, Juno-60, or Kawai SX-240. The P-600 had a nice sparkling vibe to it, but at the end of the day I was convinced it was the least engaging / responsive synth of that bunch. It had a certain tightness / stiffness / harshness of tone, or what I call the uncooperative tone. The other synths sounded more vibey, gooey & frothy, more pleasing to my ears.

In 2020 I met a successful jazz musician / composer. He said he had a Moog One for sale. I said I’d rather have his Prophet-6. His response was that he used it on a daily basis and he could not imagine his studio without a Prophet. I said that maybe I could arrange a Prophet REV-2 in exchange. Again, the response was negative; in his words the REV-2 sounded like crap compared to the Prophet-6.

This year, when I had a chat with my friend, he advised me to never buy the REV-2, as it was “the same crap as the Prophet 08, only in a new box”.

I thought “dang, is it really that crappy?” Or are these people just being dogmatic or opinionated? I had to see for myself.

REV-2: FIRST APPROACH

When I took my freshly-acquired REV-2 out of the box and started to tweak it, I wanted to throw it out of the window and get my P-600 back. I thought: damn, they were right! This is so frustrating. Why does the REV-2 sound like a Waldorf? What has been lost? What kind of stupid microprocessor has been used in place of some other microprocessor? What piece of modern technology has gnawed at and eaten away the ancient soul? This so-called Prophet is a masquerader!

The Prophet 600 had its numerous downsides, but at least it had some kind of motion in its sound, some instability, some amount of magic. REV-2 in comparison seemed as flat as Kansas plains. There was something strange going on with the dynamics of the REV-2 sound (or rather there was not much going on). I had the impression the sound was trapped behind a glass wall and it was impossible to bend it in any direction. I often felt like I was missing a knob that would give me the final touch. A real highpass filter? A curver of the envelopes? A supressor of the cocky waveshapes, an amp tamer? I had no idea. I wanted to kill this characteristic, move around it & move closer to the softer sound of my P-600, but there was just no satisfactory tool to do that. This resulted in a feeling of extreme frustration. It’s the kind of feeling I also had with my 1984 – 1988 DCO synths: the JX-8p, or the Juno-106. Or any analogs that are too stable, which lay people / outsiders describe as “too digital / too ugly” sounding.

REV-2: SECOND APPROACH

Then, after a couple of days, I started to like the sound, or at least some part of it, and I’m not sure why. Was it because I managed to find some sweet spots? Or was I just getting accustomed to the unique tonal quality of the newcomer? I’m not sure. I think I started to look at this synth from different perspectives.

At first the REV-2 became to me a bit like an acoustic instrument – say, a harpsichord. Clunky and coarse, but having its appeal & charm in some scope. The inherent timbre seemed “natural” or “fizzy” in a way that was attractive, especially when I used just one oscillator out of the three (2 + sub) available to get a more delicate sound.

Then I continued my explorations and the collection of sounds grew. I started to notice and enjoy the tonal difference between the REV-2 and the other Sequential polys. I would describe the contrast by saying that if the Prophet-6 sounds hi-fi and “pro”, then the REV-2 sounds more dusty, gritty & primeval.

Then came the experimental phase resulting in embarrassment on my part – I realized that throwing this synth out of the window would have been a big, big mistake. Because once I learned the REV-2 inside out, the experiments were bringing in a continuous stream of interesting textures that I just didn’t suspect were possible. Back in the day I had an Electrix Warp Factory which was a vocoder in its design, but I used it (as the name would suggest) to warp various sounds out of their original shapes & forms. And I swear to God the REV-2 is the only synth in which I’m hearing textures reminiscent of the Warp Factory. Well, it’s just impossible that we won’t be able to produce a variety of interesting sounds with the rich Curtis filter plus all the LFOs, the loopable aux envelope, the 8-slot-mod-matrix plus delay, reverb, ring modulator & audiomod – and all of it interconnected / modulatable.

CONTROVERSY / BUYER’S GUIDE

Now I think I understand why for some people it’s a crappy synth, while for others it’s an inspirational instrument that’s been deservedly sitting on the bestseller list for the last years; I too got myself fooled by this annoying & misleading terminology. Roland watered down the Juno name when they decided to put it on every new synth they released around 2006, while Sequential plays the Prophet name-game like an old, stuck record. After Dave Smith returned to making synths in the 2000s, he reused the “Prophet” moniker for many of his most important polyphonic instruments, even when they were architecturally very different from the original.

REV-2 is not a recreation of a vintage analog like the P-600 or the P-5. It’s not a digital hybrid “monster” like the P-12. Also, it’s not a P-X type of sampler-synth either. Why the hell are all those synths called Prophets then??? It’s almost as if the company itself was called “Sequential Prophet” and sold synths called “5”, “6”, “12”, “REV”, “X”, and so on. Had my REV-2 been christened something else, like “Noah” or “Moses” for example, it would have spared me several confusion-infused days.

The REV-2 is extremely far from being a crappy synth (there are not many crappy synths on the market anyway). At worst it may only be a misunderstood synth. I definitely did not understand it at the beginning and was pulling my hair out to try to turn it into something that it wasn’t. I think other people (including my friends mentioned before) have fallen into this trap too.

If you take a look around the Internet, it seems that a lot of folks tend to use their REVs in a “vintage” context, and with mixed results. You will also come across some “workarounds” to make the synth more “vintage” or more “dynamic” sounding; for example by using the gated sequencer to introduce slight variations. But to tell you the truth, I’m not a fan of the Alesis A6 Andromeda type of synths – synths that are seemingly great but only after you employ nerd tricks to “make them shine”. I personally don’t like this kind of horseplay, all the more so if I’m paying 2 thousand bucks. Besides, I don’t buy the narrative which goes like: “this synth is great / wonderful / spectacular, but to make it really so, here’s a secret trick that you have to employ on every one of your patches”.

So if somebody tells you that REV-2 sounds like an old analog if you “just do this trick” – no, it does not. Of course these are just hazy words, sometimes used to idiotic extremes, and using them in nuanced conversations about synths may seem silly, but sometimes it’s the only way for beginners to communicate, navigate & explore the synth realm and understand their aspirations before making their first purchase. Does the REV-2 sound “analog” if you own a Korg Polysix and a Roland Juno-60? No. Does the REV-2 sound “analog” or “organic” if you only own a Roland Gaia, or a Hydrasynth? Yes.

To my ears the REV-2 overall tone is a great one, but as for its general character it belongs to neither modern nor vintage category. I’d say the ratio is 33% vintage analog, 33% digital / wavetable-ish, and 33% somewhere-in-between. I know it might seem absurd because the synth is a classic triangle + sawtooth + square design (no wavetable synthesis), but the sum of all its parts turns it into something else / something more. And all those complex parts need a little bit more time and attention to dial the good in / dial the the bad away. It is not enough to push up the “slop” knob, it’s just a pitch randomizer. Life’s not that easy;) There is some learning to be done with some elements of this synth, but if you do learn it, you’ll be getting many more sounds than any OB-6 or Prophet-6 could ever give you.

REV-2: BUILD QUALITY & UI

I have to point out that finding all those sweet spots and performing all the experiments would not have been possible without the REV-2’s user interface, which really shows respect toward the user, unlike other synths that seem to have been built to feed the ego or some “clever vision” of the designer / creator. What I mean by that is the fact that REV-2 treats you like an adult – you have the freedom (and the responsibility) to create something meaningful and effective. Other synths and their designers treat you like a child and give you hard-wired, ready-made solutions, which seem like a convenience at the beginning, but which prove a hindrance later along the way. I really appreciate Sequential’s approach with the neutral / logical layout and the multi-directionality of the modulations and value knobs.

Just like in the case of Prophet-6, Trigon-6 or OB-6, there’s hardly any fault you can find with the REV-2 in terms of build quality. Solid chassis, wood panels, great keybed. But wait, there is one thing – the knobs. They’re a bit wobbly. I thought that my unit was faulty, or used (even though I bought it as brand-new), but it turns out they make them this way and all REVs have slightly wobbly knobs. It’s not an issue for the player because the wobble is very small, however, it might be an issue for an unobservant sound designer. When you tweak a knob, or when you nudge it using the show button / mod matrix assignment association and then you release your finger, sometimes there’s still a micro-wobble going on and your value may change by itself (ghost editing).

Some people may also criticize the small screen, but in my opinion even though it’s relatively small, it is enough. There are so many knobs and the screen font is so large that it’s not a problem. I’ve seen worse (e.g. Novation Summit – bad placement, poor font). The only thing that I dislike on the REV-2 are the wheels. The finger notch / cavity on those wheels is too shallow and it’s quite hard to get a strong grip on these wheels during a performance.

OUTRO

Instead of asking the question which Prophet is “better”, for me the final question is always about the outcome of the pros and cons of any given synth. Is it fun or not? Does it sound good and do the sounds inspire you? Are you excited when you sit down in front of it and start tweaking a new patch from scratch? Is it easy to work with? Does it have personality? Does it give you goosebumps each time you audition your favorite patches? For me, “YES” comes as the only answer to all these REV-2 questions.

The connectivity of various REV-2 engine modules gives you a great amount of freedom of operation. The UI is fantastic and the workflow is comfortable. The time that you spend with it brings reward. Just make sure that the often-surfacing “digital” flavor isn’t something that will fatigue your delicate analogue ears too quickly. Other people use the word “brassy” to describe that quality. I’ve learned to move around that brassy-ness and I only need a couple of minutes to come up with something I like.

If you don’t have that 3 spare minutes, and if you don’t have enough money to go at the Prophet-5 for example, then try the Korg Prologue or Arturia Polybrute instead. These synths can easily sound ugly or bad, but they can as easily and as quickly start to sound fantastically nuanced and emotive – and the REV-2 is not as quick in this respect.

REV-2: BUGS / QUIRKS

I think I should also mention some bugs / quirks that might be annoying, for example:

– the engine does not cope well with sudden audio changes: the envelopes and some extreme modulations / unison are “clicky”;

– the triangle LFO has a specific shape and leans more towards a square-sounding LFO than sine-wave sounding LFO;

– the triangle waveshape starts to sound like a square wave when adjusted upwards;

– the sequence cannot be overdubbed after recording it;

– we can choose the way to modulate a parameter: either via the LFO amount knob, or via the mod matrix assignment, but there is a catch; when I modulate a parameter directly from the LFO, I can hear the maximum effect as a genuine-100%-effect, but when I do the same connection in the mod matrix, the maximum modulation reaches only 20-30% of the effect, and I wonder why that is.

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