hubird wrote:quote from German keyboards mag 2/07, where-in column writer 'Dr. Stefan Albus' is thinking loud on the preset-playing vs sound-mangling approach:
Translated:
JB liked to check the memory slots of sent-in Prophets, just to establish that the presets were untouched mostly
We are privileged on this forum to be able to ask John himself if this story is true or just a writer's phantasy product

Hi there!
Boy, if I don't scan all of the Topics in this forum, I'll miss things like this!
Anyway, sorry to say, this is not true, but rather, a misunderstanding of the truth. I never scanned through the presets of Prophets sent in for service, but the Service Department guys certainly did, and would often make comments about the fact that "nobody changes the presets". They would first make a 'save' of the internal data, in case it would get lost while they were working on it, and then restore the data when servicing was finished. I'm sure they would check through the presets quickly sometimes to check if there was any point to save the data, but as a general rule, I'm pretty sure they did it automatically.
Another thing - I was not working at the factory until August 1982, so I wouldn't have been around to scan serviced Prophets in the years from ' 78 to July ' 82.
Also, when the preset storage was increased from 40 to 120 programs, the additional presets were from the Sales and Service departments at Sequential - I didn't contribute at all, as I was doing other stuff. The Sales and Marketing and Service guys (and maybe some of the engineering team, I'm not sure), created the additional 80 presets.
cheers,
john b.