Sequential circuits samplers

I regard the 2000/2002 as more like synths than samplers- I've always
explained my liking for it, especially to the arms-race types who mock
it's tiny memory & lack of graphical waveform editing, like this: 

that the instrument is designed for one's ears, not one's eyes, & that
it is basically a prophet synth with interchangeable oscillators.

in later years, with vector synthesis, smith tried again to create the
ultimate synthesizer, but it was all too late. the exchange rate & the
cheaper machines from the east effectively killed SCI, though many of
the designers & engineers went on to work for their new masters from
korg, yamaha & the rest.

for me, the prophet 3000 was a step too far in the direction of pure
sampling, while the VS-synths stepped away from the idea of the
build-a-new-sound-from-nothing appeal of the sampler. I loved being
able to grab snatches of sounds & turn them into synth waveforms; as I
mentioned before, there is some kinship with the mellotron here, in
that somehow the sampler sits nicely between an exact reproduction of
the recorded sounds & that analogue unpredictability that one gets
from an old synth.

anyway. it's enough for me that mine still works & that there are
other folks here who feel the same way. I feel like we're somehow in
on a well-kept secret with these machines, which somehow snuck out
when folks didn't really know what a sampler was going to be. 

when the memory got cheaper, we could all afford samplers that would
simply reproduce library recordings of real instruments, & analogue
synthesis hit an all-time low. for me, that was the worst time to be
in electronic music, although it meant that we could pick up moogs &
prophets for next-to-nothing....
only one other machine came anywhere near the 2000/2002 in giving it's
owner such an opportunity to come up with unique sounds based on his
own recordings, & that was the casio/hohner sampler with the "draw
your own waveform" interface.
if you ever got the 2000/2002 hooked up to soundforge, you could do
this anyway.... I used to fill up the last few kB of each disc with a
hand-drawn waveform, looped in soundforge.

dave smith, who also gave us MIDI (lest we forget) is still at work,
creating things like the evolver synths, & with roger linn, effects
devices like the adrenalinn. I wonder if they ever read this stuff or
think about the things they made 20-30 years ago....

duncan.