Moog only had to make a handful of modules in order to ‘sell’ a IIIc as much of the work required for the Model 55 had already been done.
‘New’ modules such as the 984 (mixer), 904c (filter coupler), 905 (reverb), 901, 901a, and 901b OSCs and a tweak to the power system was ‘all’ that was needed. I say ‘all’ in quotes because just making those modules was no easy task but with a supply chain already in place to have panels produced, PCBs produced, and 90% of the through hole parts, connectors and assembly techniques down, it was not too much of a stretch.
They’ve done very very well repurposing Engineering, Assembly, Parts. Did you know that the rubberized keypads on the Taurus III were the same leveraged on the original Little Phatty, except oriented upside down? And obviously, speaking of Phatty, the Little Phatty Tribute, Stage I, Stage II, Sub, Sub37 all leverage similar extrusions and the evolution of the subassemblies (such as the CV Jack inputs). Inside, there were changes to the micro controller between the SilLabs brain of the original LP and what was used in the Sub. And while the patch selection and display of the Taurus III and Phatty look very similar, they had a change in the digital portion of the architecture inside.
Yes, I’m a bit more Moog obsessed than most and do happy to take everything apart sort of like Marcus Fuller except not on YouTube.
Making something as a one-off, that’s a different matter especially something that may or may not sell in high volumes. It either has to be commodity, single board, simple assembly and attractively priced like a Minitaur, or labor intensive, hand wired, made to order for the most part and high recovery.
Dave Smith has done well but he (I think) farms most of his work out, possibly as far as China but I could be wrong on that last bit. But keep hoping (a lot of us are)
