Sequential circuits samplers

>>Im thinking of getting a prophet 2000.  
From what I gather it has 8 voice polyphony..so that means i can play
8 different samples at once? or can i use it to play 8 different
instruments (bass as 1 sample) synth as sample 2?? I guess my question
is how multitimbral is it? [snip] ....Im thinking of buying the
prophet for it's filters<<

well. stuff to look out for on a 2nd hand 2000, first- does the disc
drive work? does the keyboard work? how much memory does it have? has
it got the latest software? have the individual outputs been fitted?

but, cut to the chase: the machines are 8-voice poly, yes, but were
designed in the very early days of midi, & dave smith was one of
midi's main designers, so he felt qualified to take a few liberties
with what we now know as midi 1.0.

so the 2000/2002 support midi modes like this:
mode 0- sys-ex transmit/receive only
mode 1- base channel transmit/omni receive, monotimbral
mode 3A- base channel transmit/receive, monotimbral
mode 3B- "primary" channel transmit/bitimbral receive
(so you can set the thing up to respond to two channels, each with
it's own sound, but the exact behaviour depends how the voices &
keyboard maps are set up within each preset)
mode 4- no transmit/receive maps each of the 16 samples onto it's own
channel.

each mode also supports an "expansion" variant whereby the note
messages are passed to the midi out when there aren't enough internal
voices to play them.

the real answer to your question is that you probably won't want to
use the sampler to play more than one or two instrument sounds at
once. I use mine mostly in 3B mode, simple bitimbral. the way the
memory is divided up makes it quite easy to create two 4-voice
polyphonic instruments made up of three-five samples each. the quality
of the crossfade looping & the analogue filtering is still amazing
even after over twenty years, & the instruments sound more musical
than anything I have in my big emu samplers. the filters & VCAs are
curtis chips, the same as in the prophet synths, so the 2000/2002 can
be thought of as (broadly speaking) a prophet 5 with samples in place
of the oscillators.

I believe the manual is in the files section- it's worth a look, if
you've got some reading time to spare...

duncan.