Very cool, it is yours?
The only thing I would imagine is cables being all over the knobs once audio and CV was all wired.
Naw, but cool stuff at http://www.synthfool.com
now that is friggen awesome!
only thing i would’ve changed is the angle of the CP units and CV jacks…maybe more of a 45 deg angle…
nice job, I would love to manufacture one of these!
I guess the back is open becuase not every CV jack from the foogers can be run to a patch bay?
All jacks on all of my MF’s(except the CP-251) are hooked up to a patchbay. Works fine, with the exception of some minor issues that are fixed with a dummy plug.
SB, what kind of patchbay are you using? I’m considering building my own out of discrete jacks (stereo, DPST switches). Any thing to consider?
call me crazy but I’ve had this idea for a while and seeing this fooger station really made me think about it more. I’ll leave this up to y’all as far as if it is possible or not: rackmounting your moogerfoogers and having all their CV control inputs going into a CV to MIDI convertor/controller so that one could have moogerfooger presets. It would probably mean also having each moogerfooger set up in thier own true bypass loop so they could be turned on and off via MIDI as well. That way you could have the moogerfoogers and CV to MIDI controller in a rack and just your MIDI controller on the floor. One MIDI preset could be, say, the lowpass filter with high resonance and the ring mod set to tremelo. Another preset could be the analog delay set to a certain time and amount of repeats with the phasor set to slow, etc. The only problem I forsee with this system would be the rocker switches on the moogerfoogers, which couldn’t be controlled via cv to midi. Would it work?
I once considered “digitising” all my effect pedal knobs, but now I have come to appreciate all the benifits of knobs in hardware. For instance, to make useable presets, you would have to set each knob position and leave it alone. A change in temperature can affect the resistance and, therefore value, of the pot.Then, if you wanted to tweak, you would either have to do it via MIDI or a knob controller e.g. Behringer BCR-2000. I personally would much rather tweak on the real thing, and leave presets to multi FX racks and the like. And what if you felt like patching the CVs?
I was just thinking more about live playing thatn any sort of versatility in the studio. It would be pretty cool to have moogerfooger presets instead of having to reach down and tweak while you’re trying to do a show. But hell, in the studio having everything at your fingertips is a real plus and the moogerfoogers just shine for that.
I use my 'foogers live and tweak them…
presets are good, tweaking is good.. options are good…
That’s a very cool design; I would imagine you could also modify the design slightly to include hinges so you can close it up for travel. And perhaps setting the CP’s and patchbay back a little would allow you to leave the thing patched up while closed.
I use this one http://www.neutrik.com/content/products/detail.aspx?id=210_460038209&catId=CatMSDE_audio
It is Neutrik but its a cheaper model. Works fine, but the LPF picks up CV signals from the Ring Mod.(only when there is nothing plugged into the input jack).
I guess you should make shure that everything is properly shielded and don’t buy cheap parts.
This is such a cool little thing. I thought of doing this to my MFrs before I even got them. I wanted to ask y’all some questions. I have the delay, bass murf. lpf, ring modulator, the phasor, and 1 cp251.
I would like to make a kind of mini mooger modular, like this gents.
Im not sure about a few things though.
I would like to be able to modulate any pedal output from any other pedal out/in. So obviously I would need a patchbay, maybe even two (24ch). Alltogether, there are some 36ish ins and outs. In addition, I would also like to be able to change the routing of the pedals. For instance, I want to be able to use the patchbay to set the lpf into the RM into the delay, and then unplug and reroute the signal through the LPF into say the phasor then the ring mod and then the delay. Does this make sense? Is it possible?
I would like to make a minimoogish cabinet. The bottom to hold the 5 MFs and the top to hold the two ptchbays and two CP251s.
And just to make things more complicated, I would like to take a suggestion here and make a moveable top so it folds up.
Pipe dream, I know, but it would be so cool.
OK, last question, Do/should i use balanced or unbalanced cords and patchbays?
Thanks in advance…
Shakti,
Several of us have looked into this with varying degress of success. What you are suggesting definitely makes sense.
As far as I can tell, the audio signals on the MF’s use unbalanced jacks while the CV signals use balanced jacks. You should reflect this in the patch bays you choose; although it might be that the audio signals can tolerate balanced patch bays okay. On the other hand, the manuals say that if you plug an unbalanced patch cord into a CV input on an MF, the rest of the CV jacks are disabled. (Maybe I got this wrong; you might want to check the manuals yourself.)
Some jacks seem to be very particular (CV primarily, if I remember right). Allegedly, a dummy plug of some kind (described elsewhere in this forum) helps things work right. You’ll have to look that up too.
My biggest piece of advice: get your gear together, including your patch bays. Put them all on a table – or on the floor if you prefer – and then experiment with wiring them up via the patch bays. If you get some connections that work well for you, then you’re good: go get yourself some wood or whatever and build your modular synth cabinet – after you write down or photograph or otherwise record how you did your setup.
I give this advice because I tried putting everything into a rack and then hooking everything up and then trying it, and I didn’t really like the results all that much. The manuals say that there are very few ways that you can damange the MF’s by connecting patch cables to jacks, so I think that your best bet is casual experimentation followed by a more static setup.
Hope this helps.
Awww, where did the pic go?
Use a balanced patchbay and balanced cables and you won’t have problems. Any CV input on the moogerfoogers can support an expression pedal. Using an unbalanced cable won’t break anything and the CV jacks are not disabled, but at that point the remaining CV inputs (on any 'fooger with an unbalanced cable in any CV jack) are no longer able to support an expression pedal, only CV. So if you want to use a pedal in some jacks you must use balanced cables. The only other alternative I know of is to use a modular system to run expression pedals and send CVs to the foogers but that is more complex.
Thanks guys!
Good point. I should get my PB together with the CP and MFs and get it all settled before committing it to wood.
I think I am going to order an Frqbox and add another cp to the pipedream as well.
So I f I use all balanced connections, I should be OK. Right?
I’d like to make a mock-up and was wondering what proggies any of you use to make em.
Im thinking I should use some cheaper, lighter nonrainforest wood like alder or poplar or something.
Its gonna be long and heavy. I think it will be 6" wider than a normal minimoog and ppobably taller too.
Thanks again all.
you could photoshop a mock-up, but honest the best way to get your thoughts down quickly is by sketching it out. if you need some sort of precision measure, such as rack spaces, I’d suggest just using wordpad and count out rack spaces using the line symbol.
here’s an example (html format makes this not look as good as normal):
|moogerfoogers|
|moogerfoogers|
|moogerfoogers|
|moogerfoogers|
|moogerfoogers|
|moogerfoogers|
|cp-251s---------|
|cp-251s---------|
|cp-251s---------|
|furman power–|
Willi: Thanks for the clarification. I am glad that I didn’t remember right because what you have described is much less of a limitation.
Shakti: I apologize for my error.
Regards