LFO is whacked out!

Dear Moogers,

I’m having a bit of a problem with my LFO.

When I select “pitch” as the LFO destination, it sticks and no matter what I select as the destination after selecting “pitch”, it won’t change. I have to switch to another patch in order to select another LFO destination.

In addition, when I select “osc 2” as the LFO source and “wave” as the destination, it doesn’t affect waveform at all. I get a strange resonant distortion, which actually sounds pretty cool but I’d rather just have it do what it’s supposed to. This also seems to stick, causing all of the LFO sources to sound crunchy and distorted. This also can be remedied by selecting a new patch.

Any help anyone has to offer will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

sounds like a hardware problem in the mod bus. One of the analog switches may have failed, or there may be a bad logic line.
Alternatively you could try saving all your presets as sysex (for safekeeping) and then doing a factory restore… if this doesn’t change matters, though, I suspect hardware trouble.

Thanks for the reply, Amos. I’ll give that a shot. What software do you recommend using for backup? I haven’t ever tried that before…

For Mac, I’d recommend Sysex Librarian; for Windows I’d recommend MIDI-Ox.

SysEx Librarian is a free program for Mac OSX. It can be found at > http://www.snoize.com/SysExLibrarian/ > .
Documentation for the software is located at > http://www.snoize.com/SysExLibrarian/docs.html

Download and install the SysEx Librarian software. When you open it you will find a simple “file player” interface (similar to ITunes). There is a drop-down menu at the top of the Sysex Librarian window labeled “Destination;” use this to select the MIDI interface that connects your Little Phatty to the computer.


In the SysEx librarian software:

Click the “Record One” button in the upper right of the SysEx Librarian window.
You should see that it is “Waiting for SysEx message.”

On the Little Phatty, go to the Master Menu, SysEx Menu, press Cursor and use the Value knob to select Send All Presets. Press Enter, and you should see a response from SysEx Librarian. When the data transfer is complete, you can name the new file in the SysEx Librarian playlist window, and this file will contain all the presets from the LP. If you want to back up individual presets instead of the whole bank, you can choose “Record Many” in SysEx Librarian, and use Send Cur Preset on the LP SysEx Menu to send the currently-active preset. Press the Preset button on the LP and select the next preset you want to save, then press Master and you should be back on the Send Cur Preset page; press Enter to send. Repeat for each preset you want to back up individually.


If you have any troubles, make sure the correct Midi interface is selected at the top of the Librarian program. Help is also available on the Snoize.com website.



MidiOX is available for free from > http://www.midiox.com
Download and install (for PC only)

to save patches from the Little Phatty:

hook up a MIDI cable from the MIDI OUT on the Little Phatty to the MIDI IN on your computer (or whatever kind of MIDI interface you have hooked up to the computer).
If you haven’t set up MidiOX already, go to the Options menu and click “Midi Devices.”
in the MIDI devices window, click and highlight the correct input and output device. This tells MidiOx what to use for sending and receiving. (Then click OK)

OK, now that MidiOx is set up, click on the View menu and choose SysEx.
A window will pop up called “SysEx view and scratchpad.”
click on the Sysex menu in this window, and choose “Receive Manual Dump.”
Now MidiOx is waiting for you to send something from the Little Phatty.

On the LP, press the Master button and then use the Value knob to scroll to the SysEx Menu.
you can use the Cursor button and Value knob to select different options on the SysEx menu. Send Cur Preset sends only the currently-active patch, Send All Presets sends all 100 presets as one single bank file.
for the first time, I recommend sending the whole bank just so you have a backup copy of it on your computer.
when you have Send all presets selected, hit Enter, and you should start to see some data coming in on the computer screen. The Little Phatty will display the message “Sending All Presets.” When this message dissapears and the SysEx Menu is displayed again, the LIttle Phatty is done sending data. Click the “Done” button in MidiOx.
Now all the data is shown in the Display window, and it needs to be saved. To save the data, click on the “Display window” menu in the Sysex view, and choose Save As. Name the file and choose where you want to save it, just like you would in any Windows program. Ta-daa! done. This same process works if you are sending only a single preset (SEND CUR PRESET on the LP SysEx Menu). If you are sending only a single preset, it’s a good idea to save the sysex file using the same name as the preset, so you can identify it easily.



To send patches to the Little Phatty from your computer:

You must connect a cable from the MIDI OUT on your computer to the MIDI IN jack on your Little Phatty.

Be aware that if you are sending a single preset, it will automatically replace whatever preset is currently active on your Little Phatty. So, before you send a preset as a sysEx file from your computer to the Little Phatty, go to Preset mode on the Little Phatty and use the Value knob to select the preset which you wish to replace.

In MidiOx, go back to the Sysex view window (View menu + choose Sysex, if you just opened the program)
Click on File and choose Send Sysex File.
select the sysex file you want to send, and hit OK.

The Little Phatty LCD display will show “Receiving Preset” very briefly, and then you should see the new preset displayed on the Little Phatty LCD. If you are sending a bank of all patches, the transfer will take slightly longer and all 100 presets in the Little Phatty will be replaced by the presets from the SysEx file.

Thanks a lot for all the info! I don’t have Internet at home but I’ll figure out a way to download it. In the case that I do a system restore and it doesn’t fix the problem, would I be able to count on my warranty to cover the cost of the repair? I also don’t have anything to ship it in, so I’d need to figure something out for that.

If the unit’s in warranty then that would certainly be covered.
techsupport at moogmusic.com can answer all your questions; send them an email or give us a call.