ARP Pro-Soloist

This is a very easy to use synthesizer...dial in the preset and you are go! Add some of the touch effects....and play.

It's monophonic, has only one oscillator and 32 presets. Too bad it hasn't got CV ins or outs because then you could midify it. The good thing is that this board was one of the first to have aftertouch. That is fantastic for a monosynth. Especially live, when you have one hand on your polysynth or Rhodes, you can still play an expressive solo with the other hand.

So, compared to modern synths it's features are laughable...but it does have exactly the features you need..sound and control.

There are 32 presets and if you're looking for realism....this is not your instrument! Also, some of the instruments, for example 'banjo' is obviously unusable.

But some of the presets are just pure magic. They are straight, simple but they just have tons of character! They fit into your track nicely, they inspire and make you play. Highlights are the flute and clarinet sounds, the various horns and some fuzz-guitar like sound. There are also some fantasy sounds like 'comic wow' which are tons of fun. These sounds cover the nice lead sounds you would normally have to program on your monosynth!

So at first, I thought it was all pretty unflexible, until I discovered that the sounds simply work. You can turn some of the patches into bass sounds but it is not very snappy and all sounds have a kind of melancholic touch to them. It's good to have a reverb and delay, chorus and phaser also work well with the ARP. Overdrives don't.

Forgot the best thing....the aftertouch...controlling pitch, vibrato (great!) and "wow"!

Tuning is very stable, and now that it is fully cleaned everything works great and even the keyboard feels good. Very rarely, it mistriggers. It is rather badly built though, out of cardboard, the switches stick out and so do the keys...not very gig-proof. ARP's notorious sliders are also on this one. They can be cleaned! Just don't use any kind of lubricant!

long gone!

Some other reviewer called his Pro an "Atomic Poodle". That is spot on. It is rather corny yet in a very spacy way. For me, the limits are what makes it work. I just dial in a sound and play, and it sounds so sweet I'm almost in love with it. It's an ARP and it sounds very much like an ARP! It works well in jazz, funk and lounge...and for you, secret admirer of Tony Banks! This is a player's synthesizer and it's certainly not usable for dance stuff.

It also looks very nice on top of my Rhodes with the big ARP logo on the back. The concept of the ARP was copied many times, for example in Rolands SH2000 and the Korg Preset-series...the latter also sounds very nice. For me nothing can replace the character of the Pro, it does not 1% of what my Nord Modular does, but it sounds so much nicer. I'd be lost without it.

presets? that's all it has. great unusual realistic?. i have favorites the bass, steel drum, clarinet, disco whistle all are interesting enough to be useful.

monophonic, my keyboard is sticky and requires foreplay before i can coax out the sounds the way i like them. this is a bare bones unit, pre midi, no expansion, only one filter still works.

very few realistic settings, but they are not "bad" analog in all its filthy glory sticky keys questionable operations.

it works, i would gig with it. nothing more has broken since i have owned it

bad business decisions killed company

for the right price i would buy another. but i am not desparate for it. 40 bucks? please, i have had three years with this piece of junk. it was definitely worth the money. i love it's idiosyncrasies. it sputters,warbles glitches. it is a fight to just play one clean phrase. highly recommended!

This is an early seventies analog monophonic preset synth. 30 presets in all, of brass, woodwinds, reeds, bass, percussion, and fuzz guitar. Touch sensitive three octave keyboard with six aftertouch effects including pitch, volume, vibrato, wow, brilliance, and growl. The vibrato has a speed know. There are four sliders, volume, brilliance (filter), touch sensitivity, and portamento speed. Two ouputs, one high and one low, are located on the back.

Monophonic, the keyboard is touch sensitive. After a note is played, one of the effects may be achieved by pressing the key down more. The portamento is quite strange and pronounced, it can range from unnoticeable to very slow, making it sound like moving a pitch wheel slowly. The triggering is low note priority. The brilliance slider acts as a filter, and sounds very good with some of the presets and not so effective with others.

The sounds are pretty good. It's definitely analog, but not fat sounding or very thick sonce there's only one oscillator used in the presets. Using the touch effects along with the brilliance control can produce some pretty cool and wacky sounds. Some of the sounds are pretty real sounding for an analog synth, and some sound about as real as sounds on "Switched-On Bach." The portamento makes all the sounds sound cooler. Listen to the solo in Genesis' "In the Cage" to hear the sound the portamento creates.

I wouldn't trust it at a gig any farther than I could throw it. The slider and switches all seem pretty fragile, and the bottom panel is just a really stiff piece of cardboard. Since the parts are pretty hard to find I'd hate for it to be damaged. Using it home and treating it well I would expect that it should not have any problems.

ARP went out of business over 15 years ago.

If you want a very basic easy to use monophonic analog synth with some good sounds this is a very good choice. Also a good choice if you want to create Tony Banks' synth sounds from early Genesis albums.