First time Moog owner

The Moog Forum Little Phatty & Slim Phatty Forum
1

Hello all,

Yesterday I bought my first Moog, a Little Phatty Stage edition. I don’t know much about synths at all and basically bought this one over its seemingly easy accessibility, especially for soundsynthesis newbies such as myself and so far it’s not let me down, this little beast can produce quite the noise :slight_smile:

It’s currently sitting at firmware v1.03 so first line of business would be to upgrade it v2.21 (Stage II firmware). I’m thinking of adding the USB interface to upgrade it to a Stage II and possibly even get custom made wooden sidepanels for it to enhance the retrolook.

Anyway, glad to be part of the family!

best regards,

Lawrence Robinson
The Netherlands

2

Welcome to the forums, and the Moog universe !! It’s an ever-changing world, but you’ll find lots of help here. I encourage you to read all you can about software updating procedures before you have a go at it. Buffer settings in your MIDI device are important.

There are some good books about subtractive synthesis too. Enjoy !

3

Thank you!

After doing some reading up I took the plunge and did the update, only to end up with a non useable LP :angry:

Sysex Librarian will happily send the info, the LP just halts with an error on stage 1. I’ve changed transmit speed to lower rates, allowed for additional pauses between messages, no luck. My MIDI interface is a Tascam Fireone, drivers updated with Mac OS X 10.6.

Any ideas anyone (besides trying an other MIDI interface which I’d have to buy)?

cheers,

Lawrence.

4

Hi-
I can’t do much more than offer advice. I use a pc, with MIDI-OX, and a M-Audio Uno usb-to MIDI device. I would recommend doing the factory reset as shown in the manual. That should get you back to square one, and have a working unit. There have been several issues with certain software on different models of the Little Phatty. I am awaiting the newest update for my Tribute, and understand it’s quite a workaround as I do not have many features the Stage LPs have.
If you do some searching within the forums, you will find several instances of what you describe, and solutions found by others. Lastly, of course, would be to contact Moog Support. They are very quick and friendly. I expect that the forums will give you the answer.
Best-

5

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

I’ve already contact techsupport and am awaiting their advice.

Tomorrow I will have another go at it using a Windows laptop ; maybe the OS X driver is wreaking havoc here, I’m not sure. I can’t do a factory reset btw, the LP won’t start up at all let alone allow access to any menus.

We’ll see how it goes, I’m sure it can be fixed.

6

hi-
Try the official factory re-boot method:

Power off.
Press and hold down all together: cursor, enter, octave down.
Keep holding, and power up. Don’t release the 3 buttons until boot finishes.

You should see a slow-motion light up of each section in sequence. The menu window should be operational.

Best-

7

Hi Magnet,

Thanks for the info!!

I tried that, but the LP immediately tells me to ‘send firmware sx’.

cheers,

Lawrence.

8

Yes, yes, time for some good news!

I eventually borrowed my wife’s Windows laptop and hooked up the Tascam Fireone MIDI interface via an IEEE1394 Firewire cable I happened to have tucked away in a dark dusty corner. Installed the drivers, rebooted and downloaded your Windows LP v2.21 package > no luck, it again stalled on Stage 1.

I then downloaded MIDI-OX and followed a manual from Moog on the v2.2 update, unpacked the Sysex file from the Mac v2.21 update on your site (couldn’t find the separate Sysex file anywhere), configured the Sysex buffers per the v2.2 update doc and sent the file > it got to Stage 3 and stayed there. Recycled power to the LP and got a ‘data error 3’, recycled power and resent the firmware, it got to stage 5, rebooted and immediately showed a ‘data error 2’, power cycle once more.

Finally I changed the Sysex buffers to Size/Num 512/16 and 128/16 for I/O buffers and tried again > it went to stage 5 seemingly OK, then rebooted and gave me the same data error 2, but instead of cycling power I immediately sent the update again. It went to stage 5, rebooted and… firmware v2.21 installed!

So there it is, buffer settings are indeed critical on this one and slow seems the way to go. Oddly old fashioned I’d say and unless you’re technically familiar with data transmission I’d advice against doing software updates yourself.

Thanks for the support and hopefully the above will be of help to anyone (it’s already been forwarded to Moog techsupport).

cheers,

Lawrence.

9

Good news, and glad that you had the determination to try,try, try AGAIN !!! Hope you wrote it down in your manual.

Now,turn it UP !

Best-

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These type of trials and tribulations should be a thing of the past with OS 3.

There is a new OS load procedure (in use on the SP) promises to be more robust.

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That’d be nice of course, but I assume it’ll be USB based rather than the MIDI DIN approach (?).

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I have a stage 1; so, it’ll be usb to midi converter for me.

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I considered that approach myself, but I’m planning on installing the USB upgrade anyway (along with the wooden sidepanels provided I can find them :slight_smile: ).

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The USB upgrade really does not provide me any improved functionality, considering I’ve had no issues using an m-audio uno.

MY LP upgrades will include the CV out mod, get the keybed and the LHC cleaned and tightened up, and get the value encoder replaced if a new one would be any better.

Wood sure is pretty. I’m not sure what I would change cosmetically.

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I’ll be replacing my keybed altogether as my LP’s previous owner was a smoker and his nasty habbits left equally nasty looking keys :open_mouth: otherwise I’m lucky to have a fine looking unit :mrgreen: