REVIEW OF MY NEW MURF!!! PHENOMENAL!

The Moog Forum Moogerfooger Forum
1

I have many pedals - analog delays, chorus, phaser, flanger, wah, distortion, blah, blah, blah…and all I can say is that the new MURF is one of the most versatile, cool sounding, unique pedals out there. Nothing I’ve ever heard sounds like it.

Basically, you can throw out your chorus, eq, filter, phaser…and even your flanger pedal. The Murf does it all…PLUS, PLUS, PLUS…

The coolest part is that it is “sort of” like a “filter seqencer”, so you get these very cool effects. I used it in the studio this weekend and recorded it in stereo so that the even numbered filters went to one speaker and the odd numbered filters went to the other speaker. There are also 12 different filter patterns so that you can change the order in which the filters play back. (There are an additional 12 patterns that are modulated by an “on board” LFO. Bottom line is that you can get VERY SPACY sounds out of this thing in addition to the flanging, eq’ing, etc.

Anyway…I could go on, but hats off to the folks at Moog. It’s 100% Analog, it sounds great and it’s actually GREAT VALUE for the money. If I could have only one pedal, this one might very well be it.

benny
Toronto, Canada

2

Being the kind of guy that just can’t wait to play with something… I have plugged it in a fiddled with the knobs, just to make sure it works.

Today I was unable to experiment but I did get a chance to read the manual. It sure does sound exciting and fun to play with!

I can’t wait to put in hours this weekend. I already have some ideas as to how I can use it to enhance one of my current projects, a loop-based collection of pieces based on non-standard modes and scales provided by exotic wooden wind instruments. I’ve been concentrating so much on the notes I want to produce that this will help out considerably in coming up with interesting rhytmic patterns.

So far so good… well done AGAIN Dr. Moog!

3

Ok, so mine arrived yesterday . . . serial #095, one thing is i didn’t order a power supply for it so anyone ordering from Europe make sure you order a PSU with it as it uses a different one from the other moogerfoogers . . . personally I can’t see why they don’t supply one in the box?

Also build quality was a bit off . . . my “50th” badge on the side fell off and one of the rubber feet was loose in the box (blame UPS), I was able to screw the foot back on and a bit of glue fixed the badge.

So, anyway I luckily had a 9v 300MA PSU to hand and was up and running in a few minutes. this thing rocks plugged into my “out of sonic control” memorymoog - just what I have been looking for to tone colour the old beast.

I have found three uses for it so far . . .

A. As a soft distortion. Turn the Animation pattern knob to 1 (no pattern) and the Mix knob to 0 (no filters) and adjust the Drive to add distortion.

B. As a Filter. Turn the Animation pattern knob to 1 (no pattern) and the Mix knob to 10 and adjust the 8 resonant filter sliders to change the tone of your sound

C. As a sequenced filter. This is what it will become famous for . . . it has such a vast range of variations - pumping, burbling, arpeggios, trills, vibrato, chorusing . . . it is quite amazing the variation with just the use of a few controls, primarily the envelope which can make the sound go from almost sequenced staccato notes to vibrato to weird reverse envelope “backwards” sounding stuff.

I have a couple of points that bug me slightly though . . . why does the Patterns start at 1, when 1 is off (surely that should have been 0?), guess they didn’t want the knob to go to 11, that would be way too “Tap” and really i think this should have been in the vx351 format as a rackmount . . . I can’t see people using this on the floor as there are too many real-time hands-on controls which you NEED to play with.

Also, does anyone know if it’s possible to send a signal from a MIDI box (SMPTE) or an analogue click to get the thing synced up with software? There is a Tap input for a foot pedal but can this work with a click track?

Got to get back to it . . .

Mal

4

benny, where in Toronto did you get it from, I would love to hear one alongside my Vox Tonelab plugging my bass, guitar and Source (arriving soon).

5

It appears that the MuRF power supply is like the MF-104 because my old Power Pedal (not PP2) won’t drive it.

Is this the way all future MF’s are gonna come out?

6

How do they get 24 patterns when 1 is off for both banks A/B? That’s what I want to know.

7

The MuRF does some great stuff for ambient music. I’ve been running drones through it at the slowest rate and it’s just amazing. Really colors the overall sound beautifully with swells and shimmering frequencies.

Basically I’ve been running it as an outboard effect after the MF-104 Analog Delay in the effects loop. I’m running two CP-251’s as LFO inputs to the Rate, Envelope and Mix jacks.

Ever since I got the MF-104, I use it virtually every time I go into the studio. Less so for the Lowpass Filter, even less for the 12-stage Phaser and almost never the Ring Modulator.

I think I’ll be using the MuRF a lot - along with the Analog Delay.

The only thing is that some patterns have a loud clicking that I just can’t use in an ambient work.

8

About the clicking…

turn the envelope away from the end points and more to the center(i.e. ‘5’)

I notice a loud clicking or popping whan I run the thing in stereo and turn it on and off. Anyone else have this problem?

9

Okay thanks!

10

By turning the Animation switch? Each Bank has 11 Animation Patterns. Pattern 1 in Bank A and B has no pattern so the MuRF can be used as a Filter only with Bank A-1 having the ability to sweep the frequencies and Bank B-1 having an LFO both controlled by an optional foot controller..