After searching far and wide and ruling out various options, I'm pretty sure I want a Prophet. It sounds smooth and warm the way I like it, and it's plenty of pots for real time control (unlike other synths that just have buttons and lots of menu diving).
I would have the possibility to get a Prophet 600 at a special price: about 1300€ including customs duties, or 1500-1550€ with the Gligli mod. However, for around the same price (1350-1400€) I can easily have a used Prophet 08 (potentiometer edition, obviously, I know the encoder version is not so good...)

Unfortunately I have no way to try them in advance, they are international shipments as you have already imagined, and the only video that compares them is this one.



Given that it is difficult to make a comparison because in many places the P600 sounds louder, it seems to me that overall they sound very similar. Perhaps the P600's filter is more interesting, but again it's hard to judge when one of the synths is clearly playing louder than the other.

Sure, when your it it alone doesn't sound bad



and in addition I would have a whole set of features the P600, despite the Gligli mod, would not have like split keyboard, layer sounds, huge modulation possibilites, arpeggiator, sequencer. With the plus of having a modern synth, and not a vintage unit that can break at any moment (even if it were a simple capacitor).
In short, as much as the idea of owning a true vintage Prophet-600 excites me a lot, I think perhaps I could be better served by a new and more flexible P08, while preserving (I hope!) that "curtis-filter brassiness" I love so much on vintage Prophets (P600, and P5 as well).

Considering it would be first and only analog polysynth (Korg Minilogue OG is more of a fun toy), what would you do if you were in my shoes?

Get a Pro 800 and a Hydrasynth as well, that combination is hard to beat.

Just get a pro800...

If it has to be between those 2, 600 all day as long as you're not looking to gig it

I have both of them. I like both of them a lot.
They sound is very different between the two. 600 has a softer tone and can sound very fat with even a single oscillator. The filter on it is GOD. '08 is better at in your face harsher tones and has a lot of modulation to compensate for the lack of fatness versus 600. The only similarity is that they are both analog.

But get a Pro-800.

You will then have 1000 euros left to buy Prophet '08.

The Prophet 6–or even the Take 5–is a closer contemporary counterpart to the 600 than the 08.

The 600’s brassy but dark filter is its main draw. The 08 is useful mostly because of its flexibility—more modulation and routing options. But its filters and oscillators always have a bit of nasal tone that is hard to dial out when you want.

TBH, I am not looking for a faithful replica of the P-600. It happened to see a good offer today while surfing the internet for a P-600, so I did some research to understand how much is different from the synth I had in mind to get, i.e. the P08.
What can the P08 be compared to?

PS: I know the Behringer P-800, I will probably buy it sooner or later to give it a chance, but my idea for the moment is to find a 61-keys analog polysynth to replace my MOXF6 (for piano, strings, organ, etc...I'm ok with my VSTs and my MC-101)

Keybed on Prophet 600 is pretty meh, as is the case with almost any synth of its era (mid '80s), since quality standards were cut massively to compete with its frienemy DX7. Prophet '08 on the other hand has FATAR keybed. It feels much better, hence why it's my master keyboard. Granted 600's keybed isn't the worst by far, it's still a 1982 design after all. That decade had some really really trash keys later on.

Prophet '08 (and by extent - its newer, better sibling Rev2) in its architecture is actually still pretty unique versus most other polysynths. It has a ton of modulation routings so you can be quite liberal with whatever sounds you design. It's only really comparable today to other synths like Sequential's own PolyEvolver, Prophet 12 and Novation's Peak/Summit, all of which are hybrid.

If you will most likely be purchasing the PRO-800 in the future anyways, it makes the most sense to get the P08. A more modern synth with more modern features and less issues compared to a vintage synth. Have you also considered the Prophet REV2?

I found the '08 filter to be really sterile, unmusical and lacking character. It had no bite, no squelch, no vibe, just really clean and clinical. The way I remember it, the resonance sounds like a sine wave just laid over the top. Not Dave Smith's best sounding effort imo. I sold mine after a couple years and I can think of a million things I'd rather spend a grand on.

I liked the flexibility of it being bi-timbral.

You could do some neat things like assign velocity to the cutoff and then play a big chord with slightly different velocity on every note for a nice big dub techno stab, sounds really harmonic with each voice having its own filter with slightly different cutoff/velocity.

It can be a fun synth overall with all the routing, but the sounds to me always fell a bit short. It needs a lot of help from effects.

I bought my P8 in November of 2008 - I still love it!

Can’t comment on the 600

I’ve had an ‘08, dual Tetra and now a REV2, and I’m obviously a fan, but I’d take it over a 600 any day. That said, I also have a 6, which covers a more rounded warm style of sound. So… ‘08 now and Prophet 800 later. That’s my advice.

Prophet Rev2 8-Voice is probably around the same price used... might be worth considering that as well.

You'd get a much deeper sound engine and capabilities. It can do vintage voice variances / voice modeling. And you'll be getting much newer hardware that will last longer without issues. Plus if you ever wanted to upgrade to 16 voices in future, there's an upgrade / expansion available.

Never owned or played a 600, but own a Rev2. I bought the Rev2 when Behringer announced the P800, thinking Behringer would never make their release date hah. After listening to the demos, if that sounds anything remotely close to a P600, it's still fairly different enough that I will probably eventually get one. The P800 has a smoother 'classic' sound to it, the Rev2 is very 'Prophet-y' but is definitely a more aggressive modern sounding synth. I love it but its not quite a P5/P600 sound to it..

Get a used Rev2 AND a P800! :D

Neither, get a Take 5.

I didn't know Take 5, but this thing sounds very cool.
I read that it shares the same filter of the Prophet 5 Rev4 (SSI2140), ending up being a modern reissue. The Prophet 08, on the other hand, is more of an evolution, and I've read that many people who bought it it were disappointed because they thought they were buying a modern Prophet 5, instead they had another kind of synth in their hands.
Why the prophet 08 hate?

I've listened to a few sounds and I have to say it seems very flexible too.
It manages to make huge analog brass pads



great leads and bass



and also some nice lo-fi sounds



ending up being almost close to my Argon 8, so much so that I could almost think of reselling it (although it is a wavetables, but I use it often for these lo-fi/cinematic-style sounds).

The only "cons" that I find in the Take is it only has 49 keys (I would have preferred a 61 keys keybed, but I'm not a classic pianist and I don't use the lowest octave often) and the 5-voices only, but I think I can handle both. The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.
At this point I wonder if I should also consider the Rev2: 61 keys and 8 voices. Can it sound fat and chunky like the Take 5, or is it closer to the P08 i.e. harsh and modern?

The Rev2 is an updated P08, its the Prophet 08 Rev2. The sound isn't that different between the two. It's an 'evolution' of the P5 sort of. But we still have the P5 and P6 if you want a more 'classic' sounding Prophet.

Take 5 is supposed to be a completely different thing and not really related to any of the Prophet's.

P08 or Pro800.
Pro800 should be more versatile. P08 has its own unique sound.

44 keys, but you can set up a keyboard split from the front panel and. Drop the left side by one or two octaves (and set your own split point) - it’s a pretty neat feature.

I think a rev2 can be made to sound very chunky indeed, but the Take5 is almost a monosynth with how chunky it can get. Both have a square sub osc that can sound really big paired with unison mode; the take5 has bass compensation for the filter so you can get “easy mode” squelch on top of a bassy sound (but you can’t use resonance to lean out a sound like you can on the rev2 - this is very useful!).

They don’t have as much overlap as you’d think. There is some buzzy family resemblance in the oscillators, and dialing in PWM is easier on the rev2. You can also get a sort of supersaw with the shape mode on a saw (the saw shape parameter gives you what sounds like two saws, so two saw oscillators detuned with lfo to shape mod for each can get you what is essentially four saws; stack a second layer of the same and now you have eight). You can also play with panning and filter cutoff to get some huge stereo breadth with that supersaw.

The Take 5 is pretty similar to the new Prophets. It has the same general topology as the other Prophet reboots and has the SSI 2140 filters from the Prophet 5 Rev 4 (but the Take 5's has Q compensation). Different VCOs but the original Prophet 5 had different VCOs in Rev 1/2 vs 3/4--and different filters for that matter. To me it's just a portable Prophet even if it doesn't say "Prophet" on the tin.

The Rev 2 can sound fat and chunky but it a different way--more hi-fi, whereas the Take 5 has more of the low mids girth of a vintage monosynth.

I had a choice between buying Take 5 and Prophet 600 w/ GliGli, they were the same price (still are with some patience). Bought 600 because subjectively 6 voices (and 5 octaves) are an absolute minimum for me on a (keyboard) polysynth and 600 also sounded better in Starsky Carr's direct comparison vs Take 5. Also Take 5 has some weird design choices where you lose 2nd oscillator when doing filter FM IIRC (or some other modulation) and apparently its SSI2140 doesn't open as far as Prophet 5 Rev4's does (again that's what I got from Carr's videos on it).

But do consider it if 5 voices are fine by you, it's certainly has a better build quality and much less potential problems down the line due to being much much newer.

I always thought the name “Prophet” was misleading for the ‘08/REV2. It’s much more like an Oberheim Matrix 6/1000 than any Prophet 5. Dave was great at designing synthesizers, but terrible at thinking up new names.

I think Dave just thought of Prophet as the name of whatever big, bad poly he was making at the time, whether a 5, 600, 3000, 12, etc.

Yeah, that’s seems right. Even the 2000. Makes for a bit of confusion, but I guess he always had some name recognition.

Whatever innovative, top of the line poly Dave Smith never did before.

Prophet '08 brought us a modern (for the time) analog synth with a great interface (for the time) and rich options of a VST.

So nothing misleading. It's a Prophet much in the same way as Prophet 12 is a Prophet or Prophet 2000 is a Prophet.

Yeah yeah there also was Andromeda A6, but it always was some kind of unobtanium. And Alesis quickly dropped the idea of making big analog polys.

It's quite meh indeed. But nobody complains of the keybed of the Memorymoog, the Oberheim OB-8 or the Polysix. All of them share the same keybed as the Prophet-600.

Dave Smith's trademark. He did the same with the Prophet-5 Rev4 and after people complained, they had to modify sold units for free to allow the filter cutoff open fully.

The Prophet-600 had the same problem by design. The Gligli firmware corrected this.

Crazy talk. I love my 08. Full of character and deeper than most analog synths. I’m never selling mine.

First all, thanks all for the many suggestions.

I come back here after a few weeks because it took me some time to clarify my ideas.
I resumed playing my Korg Minilogue, and I realize that being able to freely exchange patches between PC and synth, download new ones from the internet and save my sound library on hard disk, is very convenient. It makes my work extremely smooth and enjoyable.
This put the magic off the Prophet-600 a bit. Beautiful, but not to be used as the only keyboard, especially for using with VSTs on PC or other desktop synths.
At first glance the Take-5 seemed fine, but I later realized that it's not even 4 octaves, but 3 and a half octaves!
The Rev2 looks very nice, but the overall impression I had hearing a lot of demos and patches, is that is a bit thin and metallic sounding. Probably more pleasant than the P08, but not fat and chunky as I expected.
As someone suggested, perhaps the best bet would be a modern synth (perhaps the Rev2!) paired with the Behringer Pro-800 module for classic Prophet sounds.

Meanwhile, saturday Behringer said that from July 17 will start shipping 4 new synths. If one of the 4 was the Ub-Xa, that probably would put the word "end" to my quest.
https://www.facebook.com/Behringer/p...F6c6JyMEFsY96l

I don't expect much from Behringer this month. Shipping 4 new synths at once probably means they are minor releases (probably the Soul/Spirit series or some Eurorack modules such as the Victor). Honestly, I would love to be wrong!

Go with the Pro-800. I'm sure it is what you need. Raw/aggresive/vintage tone, full CC control, small factor (you can use your favourite MIDI keyboard) and a unbeatable price (395 EUR). For the price, if you don't like it 100% after some weeks, you can sell it (or keep it without impacting your wallet too much).