Sooo, I baught an old prodigy,
its amazing, sounds really good,
but I have some questions you might be able to help me with:
*how can I find the owners tutorial for it? is it somewhere online?
cuz I really want to learn more…
*is there a way to find out what year was it made by the serial number? cuz I wanna know!
*The pitch bend wheel doesn’t really change pitch with 2 oscillators, it just makes a really cool phasing sound… is that supposed to be like that? can I make it a pitch changer too?
*Hooking up a moog to a nice panning delay effect on my mixer/computer makes it souds twice as better ( and wider ) is there any peddle effect someone would recommend for me to buy? cuz I want to be able to control my delay rates on stage. Should peddel be analog? Digital? I really don’t want to lose the quality of this sweet vintage sound…
*The pitch bend wheel doesn’t really change pitch with 2 oscillators, it just makes a really cool phasing sound… is that supposed to be like that? can I make it a pitch changer too?
Like this? I had a friend’s Prodigy for a short time when he first bought it. (He lives in another state, sent me the money for it, and I then sent it to him.) I loved messing around with it, since all I had at the time was a Rogue. Well… I still don’t have much more than a Rogue now
I’ve been suprisingly happy with the Guyatone/Flip tube tremolo pedal. It’s got stereo outputs for panning, and has a pretty nice warm tone for $170. Sine and square wave LFO modes, slow/fast range switch for the LFO speed (nice for abruptly flipping back and forth between slow and fast panning) and a lowpass tone control knob, and a small footprint. My only complaint is the cheap-looking plastic plugs that are probably soldered straight to the PCB. I always worry about someone stepping on a patch cable onstage and snapping a plug off. Probably easy to replace them with better plugs, though.
I ended up chosing it over other tube tremolos I’d been interested in because it was the only one that seemed to actually IMPROVE the guitar tone when it was switched in but had the intensity set to 0 so that it was just passing the signal through its circuit unprocessed. Made it seem a little warmer.
hey there.
special thanks to “industrial_gypsy” for that manual link, it was an amzing manual, never read something like it. very interesting. it answered allmost all my questions and left me on the edge of my seat while reading it. unlike other manuals i’ve read so far which allmost killed me from being sooo boring…
so I have only one question. what are all the inputs and outputs in the back of the moog?
is there a way to process sound thorugh it?
what can I plug into it?
I didn’t buy a delay yet but I’m considering the boss dd6 I’ll try it soon, but first of all I have got to make my moog work proparly agian.
the technition didn’t know how to fix it…
he said something like “Oh man ! a moog, I had one in the 70’s, bring it on. I’ll fix it for you.” but after many hours of work, still no luck
I still have random sound “shut down” while swhitching random switches, or using modulation in high frequencies
the octav shifter shifts only to allmost an octav. which is bad and out of tune. so I’ll fix try and fix these things before the delay.
if anyone had these things before, plz tell me so I’ll know what to do…
You’re lucky because not very many Prodigys have these jacks on the back. They are for control voltages to control various aspects of the synth. These jacks alllow your Prodigy to interact with other CV equipment and/or modular synths. Check out some of the MoogerFooger pedals, such as the MF102 Ring Mod. These pedals will interact and increase the functionality of your Prodigy. Utilizing these control voltages from various instruments is a really fun and experimental way to create new sounds.
Unfortunately, there is no audio input on the Prodigy. But if you’re willing to open it up, and use a soldering iron, there are a number of sites on the internet that explain how to add an audio input for processing external sounds through your Prodigy’s filter.
You can use external Oscillators, LFOs, envelopes, Sample and Hold, etc. to control the Prodigy’s OSC, Filter, Sync, etc.
You’ll find these external signals on Modular Synth Modules, Moogerfooger and other pedals, some rack equipment, Midi to CV convertors, etc.
This gives you additional modulation capabilities to whats already built into the Prodigy (The Prodigy has a very minimal design and isn’t exactly rich in modulation options, but these jacks open up alot of additional possibilities).
It could be that the keyboard and other knobs and switches just need to be cleaned. If you find that everything seems to be working, but sometimes gives you random notes or tones it is likely that (at least) the keyboard contacts are tarnished.
I just wrote an explination in the “…Opus owners” post about cleaning my MiniMoog’s contacts and it also applies to the Prodigy. If you have a steady hand and good concentration, you can solve many of your synths problems with a minimum of work just by cleaning/polishing the internal parts of the keyboard.
how do I plug it in ?
Last time I played with a mooger Fooger, it had like 20 outs an ins.
do I plug like the VFC out to my VFC in, the Osc out to my Osc in etc… ??
expet the moogerfooger, are there any other controlers I can use for that?
( where I live theres like only 2…)
about the clean up, thats exactly what I thought! but the technition says its all clean, but this instrument has been in storge for a long time, and there must be some dirty contact. I’ll cheack that out!
Yeah, exactly. Just take an output and plug it into an input. I’m pretty sure the jacks on the Prodigy are mostly inputs. So, find some outputs on other gear and see what happens. There’s almost nothing you can do that would damage the synth, using these inputs. Just as long as you don’t plug a power supply into them.
Well, there are alot of controllers and CV sources, you just have to read up on various equipment.
I guess the most obvious example would be another vintage synth. Most all vintage analog synths have some kind of CV jacks available. Also, some older pedals and rack effects will have various CV ins and outs.
Also, many older drum boxes have some sort of trigger inputs and/or outputs and these can be used as voltage sources or gate/triggers on your synth. The Prodigy has a special trigger called an S-trig and in order to use it with more standard trigger/gates you’ll need to buy or make a special cable with the two-prong S-trig (Cinch-Jones) connector on one end and a 1/4" jack on the other end. Sometimes you can find these cables for sale on e-bay and they have a circuit built in to convert a Gate signal to an S-trig signal. But you can also make them… Just do some research and you’ll find alot of explination of this sort of thing.
If you have other Midi equipment, a Midi/CV box can come in handy for converting your Midi information, sequences, arpeggios, etc. into CV signals that your Prodigy can understand.
Yeah, if you’re going to open your Prodigy, you might as well clean the key contacts and buss bars (long metal wire running underneath keys) while you’re in there. It would be unusual if it wasn’t tarnished-- maybe your tech just wasn’t looking for this.
You can use Isopropynol or Siver/Gold Polish and cotton swabs. It’s a fairly quick task, and you might find that your Prodigy plays fine afterwards. Just make sure your synth is unplugged, and try not to touch anything at all inside the synth with your fingers. Wear rubber gloves if you need to. Be sparing with whichever product you use-- don’t let too much liquid get on anything… and let everything dry off thouroghly before turning it back on.
