Prince's earlier albums were laden with analogue synth sounds all over the place and I would say one of his most trademark sounds, at least from the earlier albums was his prophet synth.

Given that a lot of the more recent albums have got some pretty mediocre straight out of the box sample based synths, how much do you think Prince has been influenced by the old school craft of getting decent sounds out of an analogue synth?

Bewdy said:

The main synth for early Prince seems to be The Oberheim OBX and the OBXA. I'm not sure what your question is. I know that Prince's 80s electro production is uber inspiring and interesting to listen to. And once the Roland D-50 came out and he started using different equipment his sound changed, and I think the production became less interesting.

Still, Around the World in a Day is almost completely Yamaha DX7. That synth was very popular and was everywhere. I hated the DX7 and FM synthesis, but Prince used it very well.

I thought he used the Oberheim synth (OB-X?) mostly but I guess he used others too.

I don't think he is that interested in the process of making a unique sound (patch). Imo the sounds he used weren't that special. However, the way he used them, in the melodies, "hornz"parts, bass etc was something new. I don't know whether he was influenced by others but he did influence many after him

oh? I thought he used the prophet,

I remember Dr Fink using it on a lot of the lovesexy tour video, and assumed that he was using that for the bulk of the sounds on the albums as well.

He did use the prophet... but like the MPLS HORNS sound is Oberheim, the intro to Let's Go Crazy is Oberheim. Etc...