Manufacturer: Dave Smith Instruments

Dave Smith is such a colossus in the Synth world it would be easy to write a book about him so I'll keep this as succinct as possible:

Dave's original company Sequential Circuits made some of the most popular synthesisers ever in the late 70's and early 80's - the Pro One and Prophet 5 in particular were truly adored keyboards and are still highly sought after today. The rise of the Japanese companies like Roland and Yamaha and the shift towards mass produced digital keyboards meant that Sequential eventually went bust but Dave moved on to work for Korg helping to develop:

The M1 - the worlds first true "Workstation" keyboard with a built in multi-track sequencer and amazing sounds.

The Wavestation - following on from his work on the Prophet VS this keyboard allowed sounds and textures to be blended using a joystick and had mini sequences of Waveforms that could be programmed and run in sync with your music.

After a few years in "the wilderness" he eventually set up DSI and released the Evolver. A half analogue, half digital monster of a synthesiser in a small desktop box with insane modulation and sequencing capabilities and a sound louder than a herd of stampeding elephants on their way to the pub on a Friday after work.

Each release since then has been incredibly well received - the Prophet 8 (an updated Prophet 5), the Mopho and the Tetra have all brought something new to the table and brought some fun back in to making music.

Oh and did we mention he invented MIDI too? Smart Arse.

Website URL: http://www.davesmithinstruments.com