Turtlerock Forum

There currently appears to be only two options:
Kenton, and Wine Country.

Anyone have any experience with either that they'd care to share?

Kenton looks better specified..

From the web sites...

Wine Country:
""Prophet â„¢-5 MIDI kits
USD$229
A Sequentialâ„¢ MIDI kit for the Revision 3.2 or 3.3 Prophet-5 offers MIDI IN and OUT jacks, with operation in OMNI & POLY Modes over 16 MIDI channels with program select & alternate release, plus response to incoming pitch wheel data in 3-ranges & current program MIDI data dumps. Instructions included. Estimate 2 to 3 hours for MIDI kit installation by a competent service technician. ""

Kenton:
GBP£275
""This retrofit kit for the Prophet 5 rev 3.2 adds the following MIDI control:

For incoming MIDI:
Any MIDI channel can be selected
Notes (MIDI note numbers 36 - 96) - transpose possible
Program change (numbers 1 - 40)
Pitchbend - (bends up and down a fifth)
Mod Wheel
Filter cutoff frequency (of low pass filter)
Resonance
Volume
Sustain (decay on-off)

By default:
pitchbend is controlled by pitchbend messages
mod wheel is controlled by Mod Wheel (CC#1) and also by Aftertouch messages
filter cutoff is controlled by CC#16
resonance is controlled by CC#17
Volume is controlled by MIDI volume (CC#7)
Sustain is controlled by Sustain (CC#64)

however, any controller or aftertouch or velocity can be mapped to control other things so for example velocity could be mapped to control volume.

For outgoing MIDI:
Any MIDI channel can be selected
Notes (MIDI note numbers 36 - 96) - transpose possible
Program changes 1 to 61 can be sent using a button press followed by a key press
No other MIDI can be sent - the retrofit is primarily intended to allow the synth to be played from a MIDI master keyboard or sequencer.

Hardware:
MIDI In, Out & Thru sockets
Push button (for programming the MIDI setup)
Setups are stored in non-volatile memory (Eeprom)""

Mine is stock, done back in the day so unsure of it's origin.. But I'd have to say that that yes, on paper the Kenton looks better.

But to be devils advocate, do you really need all that extra stuff? Every time i go down that road of midifying something to the Nth degree, I don't end up using all the fancy stuff.. just note on / note off.

An instrument like the P5 is made to be played.. and if it's gonna be sequenced, then you should still be at the helm turning it's knobs while something plays it back.

Otherwise I'll swap your Prophet for a copy of native instruments P5 and a laptop.. lol.

My 2c anyway.

Actually that's very true isn't it, and its the reason why I've never retro'ed my JP8, note info over DCB is enough to give me two hands free to tweak it when I'm tracking.

Pitch bend is handy for getting the bends right in basslines, at least they both have that! So that leaves the price - easy!

Kenton kits can be rather messy.
They gain control of many of those features by running wires all over the place from the Kenton board.
Still.. some basic features like midi velocity to filter makes for a much more expressive synth when controlled externally..
Hopefully Encore will release a prophet kit, like the excellent JP-8 one, apparently they are working on one.

You can buy P5 kits from Klosmon too, they are just clones of the factory kits, same as what Winecountry sell..
http://www.analogsynthservice.com/midi.html

lovely synth

lovely and unreliable

amnesia wrote:lovely synth

lovely and unreliable

I've never really had any major probs with mine, and with new bushings and new pots the thing plays like a dream.

I guess YMMV.

Starxi wrote:
You can buy P5 kits from Klosmon too, they are just clones of the factory kits, same as what Winecountry sell..
http://www.analogsynthservice.com/midi.html

Hey thanks for that link - I hadn't come across them before, looks cheaper than Wine country