Dave Smith: "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."
it’s cool they’re allowing people to either return it or repair it, your choice. and I 100% would expect nothing less from Sequential than making it right for all users (those who received already, and those waiting). personally, I wouldn’t be taking a soldering iron to my brand new $4k synth though.
I think Dave has always been sh*t hot in this regard : I remember buying the original little Evolver desktop when they first came out - Dave was working pretty much as a one man operation at this point. After months of happy music-ing one day the Evolver just went nuts… With one email to Dave he replied straight away, explaining what the problem was. less than a week later a replacement chip appeared via the post ( US >UK ) with exact instructions on how to take the old one out & stick the new one it. It took 5 minutes. Problem solved. Now that’s customer service.
It’s pretty amazing that Sequential came out with a fix in 3 days. Two of which was over a weekend.
You could rightly argue this is the type of problem that should not have been there in the first place. But mistakes happen, and how people/companies respond to them can be telling.
agreed. you gotta feel for 'em though. sounds like about 350 synths that need to be fixed. shipping them back and forth again for repair… can’t be cheap, even if it’s just the boards that most people elect to ship back. and it’s a volatile year for everyone, so could be a swift kick for Sequential.
but again, kudos to them for stepping in to fix the problem.
yeah. I really do feel for them. The crazy thing is that was basically down to Dave too ! there’s a sort of mad logic to that - I guess at least he couldn’t be cross with anyone else but himself !
But a real shame.
edit: Deleting the rest of the posts I made, was being way too harsh after reading back through them, Dave is cool and a legend for real. Sorry for the drama.
sounds to me like they made a final change to the production boards and that it wasn’t communicated correctly. because the right people weren’t testing these synths for the right sound (I’m sure they were still tested), it snuck past them.
or, you know, it’s a vast conspiracy and they’re sending out thousands more units, hoping not to have to do more recalls and fixes because they obviously don’t know wtf they’re doing…
personally, I’ve been buying Dave’s synths for almost two decades now, and they’ve always had top-notch customer service, so I’m inclined to believe him over you, on matters of his own company. (no offense, and I generally like you.)
Considering the circumstances (global pandemic) and most of their team working from home, I take Dave Smith at his word, especially when his word in this instance is quite humbling.
I don’t see why anyone else wouldn’t, but some folks see the world with a bit more skepticism.
I just sneezed the words “Occam’s razor” , strange
This conversation was talked about about in a Podcast very recently in which Dave Smith was present. He was asked how did you get the sound so right straight away. How was this possible. He just played it down saying he got lucky.
It is very odd that nobody except Dave would test it, doesn’t make sense. However, I own 3 Sequential synths and they are extremely well made with very few bugs. You shouldn’t let this episode put you off their synths in general.
Maybe take the whole capacitor thing with a grain of salt.
If he likes the sound as is. No reason to change it (and not comparing to correct build configuration). There is also the weird situation that these early build prophets with the capacitors could be more valuble in the future due to their rarity…
Those extra capacitors just make the P5 sounds muffled and bland IMO but its an easy mod really If you like it like that just keep the “offending” capacitors
Just be an early adopter like Matt and buy one of the early production units.
Or get a later unit that doesn’t have the “wrong” capacitors, and just use the filter to cut off all the highs.
Some posts were removed from GearSlutz. Maybe this Reddit post has the info that summarizes the problem, so you can review and decide if you really want one like Matt’s
If you like it like that just keep the “offending” capacitors 