Feeling tired of my LP - can I turn it into a modular beast?

The Moog Forum Little Phatty & Slim Phatty Forum
1

I’ve owned my LP for three or four years now and I’m starting to feel a little tired of it. Don’t get me wrong, it has some lovely sounds, but I’m getting bored with the limitations.

Before I go down the route of selling it I want to fully explore it’s possibilities. I guess what I’m saying is I’d love to explore the modular route using the existing ‘modules’ in the LP. Can this be done, and how so?

I’d love to be able to incorperate a whole bunch more (two or three more?) LFOs so that I can subtly make the synth sound more complex. I’d particually love LFOs that are ‘non linear’ (I don’t know if that’s the right term?) or rather, that automatically vary in speed a little bit as they go. Just to spice things up.

Is what I’m asking for impossible? I understand that the Control Processor box adds an extra LFO and allows for interfacing more CV gear. Is this the route I should go down? Can I then buy modules from somewhere, or even make them and interface them with my LP through the CP?

Moogerfoogers don’t seem to be the right thing, I don’t want a phaser, delay, identical low pass filter etc.

Thanks for humoring a reletive newbie :slight_smile:

2

Unless you grab a screwdriver, soldering gun and crack 'er open, you won’t have the inputs required to dive head first into modular territory.

But if you’ve never done anything except for expression pedal in your vol, Filter, and pitch CV in, the addition of a 251 will certainly keep you busy for while. More so if you also have your LP mod’ed w/CV-outs.

The nice thing about the Voyager (or the RME / Old School) is the capability to send ‘in’ a MOD source and apply it to Wave, OSC2, OSC3. Granted, the LP has the Filter source that I presume will be taken from the CV in (if something is connected) rather than from the envelope but it’s your only control.

Skipping the CV out for the moment, you can certainly add some more fun with an ASDR, or Instrument interface (if you play Guitar or Bass) from the Synth.com rack units. Once you get a power supply (or build your own) and build a makeshift rack, the modules are like 94-low 100’s in price each.

The real utility comes with the addition of being able to generate waveforms; the synth.com modules will do this in … umm.. .modular fashion; CP-251 will let you use LFO and mix with other, use Lag processor, etc.; OR another option is get your hands or feet on a Multipedal.

50 ways to go. Don’t give up on your Phatty just yet. Regardless of what next step you take, the pieces will be re-usable with your next Moog (assuming you swap the LP out for something else someday).

I bought an Old School after my LP (my first Moog) to ADD to my capabilities, not to replace. Yeah, it’s $$ and all, but the LP has a perm place in my arsenal. It’s got goods the others do not.

(one opinion)

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The real limitation with the LP is actually the input side of CV. As far as useful CV inputs go, we’re talking pitch and filter. gate obviously handy for analog seq, but other than that, not a lot. The volume CV is in my experience has been nearly-to-completely useless.

The Voyager on the other hand has a ton of inputs (waveform and Pan are huge), the ability to modulate your modulator (ie lfo), and a stereo filter with highpass capabilities.

In the end, as much as I LOVE the LP, and ultimately scaled from a voyager RME w/ vx units to it, it’s simple in it’s duties and capabilities in the grander scheme of things. It’s a bass and leads machine, like the Rogue/Prodigy. Not a Minimoog.

If you want a dedicated synth that can do A LOT more, you should just get a Voyager now. Overdrive is great and all but you can get that from a moogerfooger pedal ( to keep it all moog) and introduce it into pre or post mixer with the Voyager.

BTW, in regards to your comment about the Moogerfoogers: If you spend enough time with em, you’ll notice that most of em are not just fx pedals, but each have their own individual modular contribution to add to the mix… even the redundant filter in your scenario MF-101 has an Envelope generator, which is incredibly useful and makes for some incredibly juicy tones. Also you get a free sine wave out of it! :wink:

One last perspective if you’re on the fence about one thing over another:
If you’re not dying over the CV input limitations of the LP, you could buy the CV Output Mod, a MF-107, MF-102, CP-251, and a small mixer (ART has a great passive one for attenuation purposes,) and basically be rocking a modular environment with A LOT of possibilities.

Question is, do you want to make a Frankensynth, or get a Voyager, which has most of the features the Frankensynth has w/o the clutter.

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Thanks for those two responses, that’s helpful :slight_smile:

Money is a factor here which prevents me from getting a Voyager. I’m more than happy to take a soldering iron to the phatty, I plan on rehousing it in a wooden case soon so this would be a good chance to hook up every CV point that I can. I don’t really know anything about opening up a synth and finding all the CV points but I’m willing to try :slight_smile: However, I assume this involves a whole lot of CV signals traveling through PCBs or something which sounds like a nightmare to try and mod…

Anyway, the 251 would be awesome but it’s really expensive. I feel like I could buy some kit modules and make something similar and more specifically what I want for less or similar money, something which has the capability of being expanded on much more than the 251. Again, it’s just a case of getting my head around the realities of trying to do this.

Would love some more ‘general thinking’ input while I try and figure out how to make the most of my Little Phatty :slight_smile:

5

Might I suggest the MP-201 pedal?

You can add four additional elements to your sound; for example I think you could use an envelope to trigger the LP’s LFO. OR, you could add a few more LFOs… all over MIDI, so you’re not limited to just the CV inputs.

I found the MP-201 has been surprisingly versatile in sprucing up my LP, plus I’m find a world of other bizarre uses for it.

My $0.02

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LFOs over midi you say… interesting. I’d been turned off the 201 up front because to me it looks really ugly but I’ll check it out

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Money is a factor here which prevents me from getting a Voyager…
Would love some more ‘general thinking’ input while I try and figure
out how to make the most of my Little Phatty

Hi Mark,
I’ll throw in four suggestions: DAW based, audio based, control based, and mind based.

DAW: Consider what could be done with a Little Phatty given a ridiculous number of tracks,
and the ability to process each of those tracks differently.

Audio: Foogers, DigiTech TimeBender, ehx Memory Boy Deluxe & HOG, WMDevices Geiger Counter.

Control: CP-251, MP201, CV Out option, but also any external LFOs, VCOs, Seqs, and MOTU’s Volta.

Mind: Oblique strategies by Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt:
http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html

Click on the link. Read the word or phrase in the middle. Do something based on that phrase.

8

Id consider getting the CV output modification.

You can definately use Midi to affect every parameter in your phatty, and with a cv to midi converter any module that you got from somewhere like synthesizers.com or anything else you can add as many LFOs as you want to a particular parameter, without having to actually modify your board. This will greatly expand your phatty’s capabillities.

A cp251 will give you an added LFO and allow you to combine voltages from other places but you are limited only by what other voltages you can pump into the cp251 AND the cv inputs already on your phatty.

It seems that Midi is the key to really opening up the synth, rather than really opening up the synth.


My two pisos.


Eric