Analogue Solutions AS500-Seq

Analogue Solutions’ AS500‑Seq is defiantly old‑school, eschewing quantisation, MIDI and encoders...

“You spoke, we listened,” declares the promotional video for Analogue Solutions’ AS500‑Seq 64‑step sequencer. It might look big and bulky — an impressive 38 by 29 centimetres — but by Analogue Solutions’ standards it’s pint‑sized. Perhaps I say this because the AS500‑Seq is in fact lifted straight out of a corner of the staggeringly huge EMS Synthi 100‑inspired Colossus; although it would actually be more accurate to say it skips a generation, since the Colossus’ sequencer circuit, so far as I can tell, is itself a faithful reimagining of the lauded Megacity ‘teardrop’ step sequencer.

I’ll stop, before we end up in Old Testament‑length lineages; the Megacity was reviewed in SOS by Paul Nagle back in 2017, who found it “an endless and evolving world of polyrhythms.” A 64‑step analogue sequencing titan that could be split into two 32‑step sequencers if desired, each step offered a choice of two different gate outputs, X or Y, alongside some very inventive and creative pattern configurations. If you filed a cutting of that review, you won’t be blown away by a raft of new features here; indeed, the latter does not offer one or two things the Megacity did, such as MIDI. In fact I wouldn’t dissuade you from reading Paul’s great piece to get something of a different angle on the AS500‑Seq, so similar is its functionality to that of the Megacity. In any case, since user demand was the apparent driving force behind the AS500‑Seq’s release, I suppose it’s my job to ask whether or not that demand has been satisfied.

Along with the AS500‑Seq itself, I was grateful to have been sent a companion synth, the similarly‑proportioned Analogue Solutions Ample. The Ample I have also been keen to try for some time, and while this review isn’t principally concerned with it, it’ll be our case study if nothing else. And what a gorgeous thing it is: a 16‑step sequencer of its own with a host of syncopation options and even a ‘snare drum’ noise output, a row of CV touch pads, three oscillators, two envelopes, a ring modulator and an elegant little pin matrix, it’s ample indeed,...