Published
Mon, Sep 3, 2018, 10:30
- The name change comes after Yamaha returned the rights to the Sequential brand in 2015.
Dave Smith Instruments is now Sequential.
Dave Smith originally founded Sequential Circuits in 1974, which shot to prominence four years later with the release of the Prophet-5, the world's first fully programmable polyphonic synthesiser and the first to contain a microprocessor. After shortening the name to Sequential in the mid-'80s, Yamaha acquired the rights to the brand in 1987.
The return to the Sequential name arrives on the 40th anniversary of the Prophet-5's release. Yamaha returned the rights to the name to Smith at the urging of Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi in 2015. "Once Kakehashi-san and Yamaha enabled us to reacquire the Sequential name, I knew we'd fully adopt it again when the time was right," Smith said. "The name change also reflects the fact that our instruments are the result of a team effort. It's not just me. It's the entire company."
Sequential released other groundbreaking synths in the '80s; the Prophet VS launched digital vector synthesis, and the Prophet 600 was the first synth equipped with MIDI. Smith's namesake company, launched in 2002, offered a slew of popular products such as the Tempest drum machine, Prophet '08 poly-synth, Evolver, Mopho and more. The most recent release is the Prophet X.