I know, I know, it’s been beaten to death but I did a search and came up with screen after screen after screen of hits and no one thread that explained it clearly.
Delay time aside, is the original generation of Delay inferior, meaning that it has more noise in the circuit (less headroom as they say). Any diff in controls, or jacks, etc.
Anything upwards if a full second is fine with me but I am most interested in sonic characteristics.
I went out and bought a T-Rex Replica for the digital 1/2 of my Delay needs and love it. (even integrated it with my MP-201’s Tap and On/Off toggle via Midi) but I still need an Analog pedal and an original 104 just popped up at a local guitar shop.
So it’s either that, or a Memory Lane 2 (still considering that).
I’m really just interested in the diff between 104 generations. Factual Bucket Brigade signal to noise ratio type stuff would be helpful.
Understand that. But the general problem with Moog gear is that even IF you find a place that is a registered dealer, they’ll have a Voyager on the floor or more than likely a LP only, and 1 fooger in the case.
Never will you find a full compliment of Foogers past and present that you can have a free run at (at least not in the NY/NJ Metropolitan area).
In this case, it’s just a single original 104 in a Guitar shop with nothing to compare it against. And in this area, stepping into a Guitar store is like stepping into a war zone (aka, good luck hearing yourself think, let alone subtleties of harmonics, etc) and I’ll only be able to play a bass through it (since I’m horrible @ Guitar).
But otherwise, that is the best advise. I’m good with spec sheet comparisons and general feedback base on experience.
You need to come out here then. At the local Moog retailer there is at least one of everything except the Moog guitars in stock. Plus new and used. I was there over the weekend and there was an LP, OS, Electric blue, every pedal except MIDI Murf and a few theremins. I’ve got a 104Z. If it is quieter than the old ones, they are REALLY noisy. But then, I was not trying for digital purity with this. I’ve got 3 of those.
As for which to get, “REALLY noisy” is a good enough detractor for me. Agree with the point on Digital Purity and having that taken care of elsewhere. I’m fine having a somewhat dirty degradation of repeats but noise in general is not the desired end state.
The Store is Music Brokers on Central in Phoenix.
By noise I’m talking about the degradation of the repeated signal. It is by nature noisier than the dry signal and considerably lower in bandwidth. The device it self is pretty quiet in both standby and active with no signal running through it. My Ring mod makes more noise idling. The 104Z is quieter with my modular than with my Voyager. Most likely the level of signals is different enough to cover the noise floor.
I know this doesn’t answer your question but you can go to Main Drag Music in Brooklyn and test out any of the current Moogerfoogers. I believe they have every piece of new Moog gear on the sales floor and have rooms for you to demo gear away from the sales floor.
I have an original MF-104, but I’ve never used the newer ones so can’t compare them. I will say that, as a bassist, I found that I had to be careful how high I was running the gain - I had to keep the gain light from turning yellow or I would get some (to me) unpleasant distortion - and I like distortion!
Here’s a track that’s slathered in delay, all done with the MF-104:
I found that when cranking the feedback, the sound can get somewhat harsh, as you can hear. I find that an original Space Echo tape delay is much more musical for that type of sound.
Not sure if this helps - in fact, I know that in a way it doesn’t because I can’t give you any factual info - but figured I would post them anyway.
I have AB’d a friends original 104 to my newer 104z many times and have yet to hear a difference in the sound of the two pedals. They are analog pedals so I would assume that one could sound slightly different from unit to unit but honestly the 104 and the 104z sound so close that one would be hard pressed to tell the difference. Now the 104sd…never tried one but I know it’s got a slightly longer delay time. I wonder how dark the repeats on that one get with longer delay times. On both the 104 and 104z the delays get much darker with longer delay times so I would assume that the 104sd might be a bit too dark to honestly be useable with that extra delay time but this is just a guess
The repeats do get very dark on the SD’s Long setting.
But one way of looking at the extra delay time compared with the Z is that you get an extra 200 ms on the Short setting, of which the repeats remain rather bright.
Still one of my favourite things to do is to either double or half the time by punching the length switch, which of course shifts the pitch up or down an octave.
This is off topic, but There isn’t a Moog dealer in Arkansas, aside from Guitar center and I haven’t seen a Moog ANYTHING in there since the LP I. And they won’t get anything either unless you pay for it sight unseen.
That’s the bitch with many of the Moog dealers in my area too. They don’t stock much of anything and if they do, good luck trying to get questions answered or trying to take it for a spin.
Recently somebody passed me a note about a shop in Brooklyn that has everything setup for use.
I bought my Diamond Memory Lane II through a boutique shop up in Cranford, NJ. I thought the guy just did lessons and had an internet storefront. When I went in to pick it up (it was special order), he had about 1,000 of all kinds for anybody to play in any config. Unfortunately he does not carry Moog but the world needs alot more of these types of shops and less Chinese owned or Wall street greed based corportations.
Just about every company out there is going to give a dealer one of everything they make for demo. Shame that GC doesn’t do the right thing by Moog; their products could be much further along if they actually had proper Demo setups of them.