Anybody feeling nostalgic for the older instruments? Probably not...just me. I would have been happy with a tiny group of people who produced and maintained a small line of synthesizers. I know, I know....
I realize Sequential is much more proficient now at dealing with problems, bugs, and OS updates, and that seals it for most people. But I tend towards the smaller, simpler, more boutique experience.
By industry standards, Sequential is still a quite tiny company. The boutique status didn't really change that much in terms of the company's actual size. Even a small company like Moog is still way larger by comparison. But of course the designs became more streamlined, refined, and diversified over time just as much as the target market became more specific, not in terms of musical styles, but in terms of instrument categories, which in turn was a byproduct of how the market developed in the most recent years.
When Dave returned with the Evolver, it seemed like a completely carefree endeavour. It was before the big wave of analog resurgence hit the mass market and when many customers were less dogmatic about certain preferences. The Evolver reflected that openness by the combination of different analog and digital features and being very much its own thing (of course all Sequential instruments are its own thing, but I'm referring to this attribute within the context of certain consumer expectations here). It had its ties to the past, but it was not classifiable by certain trends or fashions because those didn't exist yet to the same degree as they do today. The nostalgia that used to characterize particularly the electric guitar market hadn't hit the synth market to the extend we're now used to.
I still do think, however, that the Evolver remains Sequential's primeval soup. There are still traces of that design in the PX, and before that it obviously influenced the architecture of instruments like the P12 and the Pro 2, the Tempest, the Mopho, and the Tetra. It was the basis for the first analog-only offspring Prophet '08 and its mod matrix philosophy still essentially shapes the flexibility of all current instruments with the exception of the P-6 and OB-6.
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