First impressions of the Sequential Take 5

[SynthWizard]

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First impressions of the Sequential Take 5

I’ve been wanting to try the Sequential Take 5 for a while, and posted here before wondering if anyone had traded their Rev2 for the Take 5. Today I visited a local Sequential dealer here in Portland and played the Take 5 for a while, decided to share my thoughts if they are at all helpful with others considering one:

• The build quality is better than I expected based on the photos and videos I’ve seen before. Knobs felt great, the display was nice. Buttons were clicky. Flexing is not an issue at all when using, so that whole flex gate thing is overblown, IMO.
• keyboard feels terrific, actually better than the keys on my Rev2. Velocity is amazing, it’s nice and responsive without feeling mushy or clacky.
• The filter sounds GREAT. I loved the overall sounds that were coming out of it, I played through 5 banks of presets and created a custom patch while I was there.
• The presets are incredible useful compared to the Rev2, lots of good foundational stuff that I had fun tweaking and playing the sequencer with.
• Having access to the sine wave is a great option and it feels like the Take 5 excels at the soft, electric piano type patch sounds. Would be a great ambient machine I think.
• The knobs aren’t encoders, so changing the envelopes and filter cutoff, etc is not represented on the display. This is kind of weird at first, it feels very old school. Most modern synthesizers show you the values on some type of display at you manipulate the knobs, so not having access to this means using your ears more than dialing in a precise amount. Coming from the Rev2 with a display that tells me when I change almost anything, it felt like a huge departure.
• The low octave split is a brilliant spot of hardware design. Since it’s got a small keyboard, being able to set the split point and put the lower split either 1 or 2 octaves down is incredibly useful. Well done, Sequential.
  

So there you have it, my two cents from my first encounter with the Take 5. It’s a very good synthesizer. Do I want one? Yes. Do I feel super rushed to sell my Rev2 ASAP so I can get one? Not necessarily. It left me wanting to play my Rev2 more and really analyze whether the immediacy of the Take 5, along with the sound and form factor, were worth the trade offs of getting rid of the Rev2. I don’t really have a clear answer yet, but I may be putting the Rev2 up for sale sooner than I think…

submitted by /u/DoogerZone
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