Hi. I’m new to the Moog forum but I’m not new to Moog. I’ve been playing them for years.. slim phattys. I also have a Sequential OB-6 and a Roland Juno 6. I’m a guitar player/teacher by trade, and I’ve been playing music ever since the mid 80s. My first experience with Moog was listening to switched on Bach by Walter Carlos until the grooves wore out on the record as a child, and my question is the following: what makes more sense considering the price is about the same; if I would have six slim phattys polychained, or if I would buy the Muse? I love the sound of the phatty, but it’s a bit more money and space required. Would also be cool to have a rack tower of phattys glowing and in sync. The Muse has more voices though and some more features, but I heard it’s pretty buggy which I don’t need. I also was impressed by the matriarch but I don’t know if I’m keen on the paraphony. I am kinda old school.
The Muse has a gorgeous sound, but I personally would never buy one due to the error threads here in the forum which would give me a bad feeling.
And I prefer taking control over all synthesizer processes, signal ways, patches etc. anyway, so I keep and use my modulars.
It is much more work to set up a sound, and I can’t store patches in a lib or so, but that way I have the maximum of flexibility, and I am responsible for a correct setup and can fix all problems without being dependent on a repair and bug fixing service.
But not all synthesizer enthusiasts want to be that technical. All those complex instruments like the Muse or others provide some advantages which my setups miss.
I don’t know much about the Slim fatty, but if you get six of them how slim is it going to be?
For monophonic Moog tones I have a Behringer Mod D. It’s a great synthesiser.
A few months ago, I purchased the muse and it has been revealing its surprises daily. In fact, I replaced my 61 key mini controller with the Muse. It takes a little longer because you have to press the MIDI button and then scroll down a bit and turn off local controls for the keyboard and its control wheels. It also can only go up or down one octave instead of two octaves like a true midi controller. You also cannot transpose at the note level, to for instance play along with something written in the key of B by transposing up one step so that you can play it in the key of C. After all, I too am a guitar player. There’s a work around in the door though where you can tell it to transport down one step and you can play the White key and get the scale the key of B in your DAW.
I think you’d love the muse. A lot of people cared about tuning issues, but if you go through a full tuning that’s supposedly solves the problem. I generally leave it on when I know I want to use it so it’s more or less less stable. But even then if I detect repeated pressing of a single note coming in different tones, I’ll just use the quick tuning feature which is literally three presses. I’m hoping some of the things I’m looking for will come out in 1.5 firmware update, such as the ability to adjust not just octaves but by single steps.
I had a slim phatty. it was great but there is no comparison to the muse. The modulations alone with functions and control are amazing. Tuning will be a thing when you first get it but you just tune every temp change and you are good. it creates a map (as other synths do).
As someone who has owned many synths (currently 18) I would say the Muse is my favorite.