The Take 5 is something special – all the goodness of the Sequential range in one balanced, affordable, compact package. And now the polysynth for the rest of us adds a ton of sounds and sound features, like envelope repeat, LFO slew, tuning choices, Lo-Fi effect, and more in a free update.

There’s a lot in this OS release, earning that 2.0 moniker:

  • 128 new presets
  • 8 new sound bank locations for a total of 512 memory slots
  • Envelope Repeat for both envelopes (so you can make rhythmic and evolving sounds)
  • LFO slew for both LFO 1 and 2
  • Lo-Fi Effect (wow, flutter, playback head azimuth, tape drive in one effect)
  • Oscillator 2 filter bypass
  • Scale – 65 preset alternatives for tuning
  • Route modulations to Vintage Amt (okay so between this and Lo-Fi, you can get very gauzy and shoegaze-y)
  • Foot pedal control of the sequencer

It’s all some great stuff, and shows Sequential’s ongoing commitment to their terrific instruments.

More:

https://www.sequential.com/take-5-v2-update/

If you buy something from a retail link, CDM may earn a commission.

Take 5 @ Sweetwater

Take 5 @ Perfect Circuit

My only gripe here is that it appears they didn’t implement complete tuning support as on some other Sequential instruments (OB-6 and Prophet-6); you have only a selection of fixed tuning presets. There are a few of them, though, with descriptions in the manual – those presets are downloadable as SysEx along with the new factory banks. See here:

https://www.sequential.com/download-take-5-sound-banks/

New features are in the addendum:

Manual addendum

But the alternative tunings are detailed in the manual itself:

Take 5 Users Guide 1.1

And it is a decent selection, with various tunings from Wendy Carlos’ gamma to one Javanese/Balinese slendro tuning, plus – this is the crucial part – precise notes about each tuning’s source (with footnotes, basically). See Appendix F of the manual.