Sequential reports that the first production version of both the Prophet 5 and 10 Rev 4 has hardware problems. This manifests itself in a duller sound that the original vintage Prophets. The problem is in the PCB, and Sequential says that owners who have this problem will exchange either the main board or the instrument for free.
This is what Dave Smith says about the issues:
“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”