ROSS KELLY: Here you see I’m just cleaning off the gunk, which actually is quite a bit underneath where the stickers are going to go, a label which I’ve already peeled. It says MIDI in, MIDI out.

[ROSS KELLY PLACING A LABEL/STICKER UNDERNEATH NEWLY INSTALLED MIDI JACKS OF THE SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS PROPHET 5]

I’m going to clean out the inside of the case a little bit too. I’ll have it all in just to get some of the gunk out of here and see if I can pick up any loose metal. It would be better to use a rag but this paper towel will do. See there’s a piece of metal. You know, if a piece of metal were to fall somewhere on the processor board or something it would possibly short something out. If it fell on the power supply, that might be a big problem, maybe a problem for you as a user getting electrocuted and also a problem for the synth getting shorted out or -- See, there’s a little bit of metal in here that I’m catching right now.

This is the power supply and these caps here, this big cap and these two big caps were replaced. Some of the original caps were a different type of cap, but I replaced all of them with modern electrolytic-type caps. I think the other ones were tantalum.

This is the thing that holds these big caps in place. They got one for this wonderful bubble gum colored wire holding the thing in place, but there’s a hole for a screw down here which the screw is missing when I got it. I mean it will go to -- something you should have if you work on any sort of equipment. There’s a large assortment of screws, which I’ve got a lot of screws and jars full of screws over there. Get this out of the way while we’re here. Those look good, that looks good. Yes, the synth has now become the workbench. There are one -- and maybe want like a lock washer so this doesn’t come undone quickly which maybe I do or maybe I don’t have.

All right. So, now when I try to put this thing back together, fortunately I put the jacks in correctly and all that is put back together. I’m going to try to put the MIDI part back in here. I’ve reassembled these cables. We took a part earlier. It’s the MIDI board. P5 MIDI 2.1, and this basically is an interesting little piece because this chip right here used to go into this socket. Now, this board plugs in where that socket was and takes the place of it.

so, I’m going to put this back in to its socket. Honestly there should have probably been a better way to have done this I’m sure but the thing doesn’t like to stay in once it gets in here sometimes.

All right. That’s back in, and then we’re going to replug all this stuff back in. This is the digital controller which I had disconnected before which I’ll have to plug that in later. The main one is the power supply. I’m going to make sure this lines up correctly.

Last but not least, the audio cable, which is, if you remember, I marked this so I can tell which side went out. So, this is the outside, plug back in.

Those jacks are now in place. I screwed them in nice and tight. The other two jacks are back in place. I just want to tighten those up maybe a little bit more, but let’S get this digital cable plugged back in now like I’m bleeding.

[ROSS KELLY RE-ASSEMBLING THE SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS PROPHET 5]

Now, let’s find out if she still works. Pray well you don’t see any smoke.

BILL HOLLAND: I’m praying, man. Oh!

ROSS KELLY: No. That’s still not right.

BILL HOLLAND: No?

ROSS KELLY: No. All right. It’s close but...

BILL HOLLAND: No cigar.

ROSS KELLY: ...no cigar. Yeah.

The MIDI board like is like really touchy and the person who designed this kit like put too much tape on these frigging things so it’s like huh.

Make sure this is all plugged in. Oh, there it goes. Now it seems to be happy or happier. When the Prophet 5 turns on, what happens is you’re going to do it in one second but it goes through an automatic tuning, so here let’s watch.

That light over there it says tune. First it tunes. It takes a little while. It tunes up all the oscillators, and then there you go. It’s on. It’s working. This should be working fine if it doesn’t lock up. It seems to be working. Now, let’s see if we’re getting audio out of it now.

[ROSS KELLY PLAYING ON THE SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS PROPHET 5]

Look at it here. I didn’t lose my patches.

[ROSS KELLY PLAYING ON THE SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS PROPHET 5]

I’m getting back in business. Now, when you test the MIDI though, that’s next.

To set the MIDI channel, you hold down the record button, 8 changes the MIDI channel so watch the screen. I have this set up to be on 7 in my setup, and then 6 will shut off the omni mode, and then you’re now in single-channel mode. So, let’s see if we can control this from somewhere else.

Let me see. It has two, an A and a B MIDI out, so you can do two sets of 16 so there we are.

[ROSS KELLY CONTROLLING THE SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS PROPHET 5 USING A CLAVIA NORD LEAD]

MIDI is working.

[ROSS KELLY CONTROLLING THE SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS PROPHET 5 USING A CLAVIA NORD LEAD]

And I can control from this too.

[ROSS KELLY CONTROLLING THE SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS PROPHET 5 USING A ROLAND JUNO 106]

Then you hear the Juno.

[ROSS KELLY CONTROLLING THE SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS PROPHET 5 USING A CLAVIA NORD LEAD]

Installing the initial MIDI kit, there was a little bit more to it like I had to take a couple of the boards out and cut a few of the traces in the boards. So like -- Do I have a PCB board? So like not that this PCB board represents anything in the Prophet but, you know, I’d have to, on some of the boards inside of here, I had to like take a razor and scrape away. These are basically wires going between the different points. I had to cut a couple of them inside of the Prophet.

I had to run a couple of wires between points where I cut the like -- basically to reroute things, I had to run a couple of small wires to reroute signals from one place to another to correspond to have the MIDI kit worked as opposed to how it work when it was just set up for CV gate control. So, there was a little bit more that what we did, but what we just did was the heavy mechanical part of it which is actually honestly probably harder than doing the actual electronic install if you’re confident with soldering and cutting wires and not afraid to mess things up a little bit and figure it out. So, this is probably the more time consuming part: drilling the holes and putting in the jacks.

That’s the Prophet 5 MIDI kit. I’m Ross Kelly. You're watching Gearwire.Com.