But, as you will see from this review, the Pro-One has some very nice design features, and for the money it represents excellent value.

And this was very important because at the time, it appeared that the last thing the musical instrument market wanted was another monophonic synthesiser. SCI (Sequential Circuits Inc.) had wisely decided not to have all their eggs in one basket, and by bringing out a monophonic version of their prime line, they could take advantage of the quantity orders they had for components, thus keeping costs down as far as possible. The Pro-One was launched officially in February '81, as a monophonic non-programmable version of the Prophet 5. He is now President of a very big synthesiser manufacturing and design company based in San Jose, California - so take heart all you closet designers, you too could 'come-out' in a big way. They are headed by a guy called Dave Smith, who started the company some eight years ago building sequencers in his bedroom. Sequential Circuits, as you should all be aware, are the people who developed the Prophet 5 synthesiser - the first commercially successful polyphonic programmable voice-assignable. it's good, not that you can start laying into it with a piece of lead piping so we thought, as we haven't previously taken time to examine said instrument, that now was a good time to give it the proverbial 'once over'. Anyway, in my, and most other peoples' book, the Pro-One takes a hell of a lot of beating - i.e. Generally, I advise the person enquiring to take a look at either the Moog Prodigy or the Sequential Circuits Pro-One (though I know that our editor isn't too keen on the Prodigy because it doesn't have a white noise source). We are often asked which fully variable monophonic synthesiser we can recommend.

Sequential circuits pro one j wire