http://www.moogmusic.com/taurus/?section=product&product_id=21299
Holy Shit!
I know.. This is great news..
The past 3 years at NAMM, every 10 mins someone would ask “When are you bringing back the TAURUS?” …
These will gone before you know it… Only 1000? They’ll probably have a Stage edition after that though…Maybe…
Moog:
Here’s something you might consider adding to the new Taurus..
How about a horizontal cylinder-type drum pot (or a few of them) to control the filters, sweep, oscs, etc. like the Boomerang uses to control its output level? So cool.
This is fantastic news! Thanks Moog.
A few questions:
- Is the new analog engine a modified Phatty or Voyager engine or completely new?
- Taurus I was one octave, Taurus II was 1.5 octave. “Taurus I style” is 1 or 1.5?
- Velocity sensitive floor keys? How about aftertouch for modulation?
- Foot control of volume and filter, similar to Taurus I? The Boomerang rollers are interesting.
- Midi i/o? Foot trigger and midi in trigger simultaneously?
- LFO controlled from aftertouch, velocity and DADS envelope?
Love the inclusion of CV inputs (how about outputs?), tap tempo and arpeggiator!
I currently use a Roland PK5 triggering a Dave Smith Evolver and/or Voyager (and others). I also use various Midi Solutions and Anatek boxes to enhance the floor key velocity and FSRs for aftertouch. Great fun controlling various filter, LFO modulations, arpeggiators.
Thank you.
Hmmm..
First an homage to the D (OS), and now a reissue of the Taurus.
Could a modular be in the works as well??
I’m hoping for a MemoryMoog. 
I don’t think they will build a modular. If they are iffy about the demand for the Taurus then a Modular probably won’t be in the future.
Also, You know I got to thinking. Moog doesn’t have a good history of Polysynths. Look at the Polymoog and the Memory Moog… 2 synths that bankrupted the company.
Not a good history of polysynths? I’ll bet if the PolyMoog wasn’t over-engineered, and if they used REAL Moog oscillators in the MemoryMoog, they would have done quite well. The Polymoog keyboard did alright. Gary Numan had like six of them in his video Cars. If Moog wanted to build a decent polyphonic synth, they could do it. I am certain of it.
Oh..don’t get me wrong, im not saying they coudln’t but for the polymoog to have had an OSC for every voice and a Kbd Gate for every key depressed…it would have been huge and expensive!
I should have said THey don’t have a good history WITH polysynths.
Electronic pipe organs have 60 oscillators per voice, if you want to talk big and expensive. 
But I understand what you’re saying. The Polymoog had a price of $5000! Great deal by today’s standards, but back then, that would have bought a Cadillac.
However, with modern technology and surface mount, I’m sure it would be possible to build a reasonable polysynth…DSI has one for the price of a set of new Taurus Pedals, so Moog could make one based on the LP, rather than the Voyager, for lets say…$6000. Still affordable, Mister I’m-Building-a-Moog-Modular.
i really like that idea! no more bending down, just a quick roll of the foot
Re: polyphonics
Hardware and manufacturing are one thing.
Providing good operating software is quite another.
Programmers cost money.
If they decided to use one programmer for the whole project, it could take a long time.
More programmers means much more money outlay at once though.
The Polymoog had no software at all, but several engineers and lots of custom engineered bits.
While not a golden rule, generally the less hardware you have under the hood, the more software you need to make something good from it.
The Alesis Andromeda A6 is quite like that: almost empty, but tons of programming and design.
Mostly labor.
Today, companies are farming fabrication off to China to save money, but they can’t do that with software.
So it’s one or the other: high US manufacturing costs or high US programming costs.
Parts are cheaper than good labor nowadays.
In my experience, the Polymoog was, if anything, under-engineered. I worked in retail music in the '70s, and the 2 Polymoogs I sold were total nightmares–mostly static problems that would fry chips every time you touched them. One owner even threatened legal action. I’d say that the Polymoog as delivered was as big a contributor to Moog’s first downfall as any other factor–too much, too soon.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised that if Gary Numan toured with 6 Polys, he probably couldn’t count on 5 of them at any given time. 
I mostly agree with that, except that there are more programmers out there than the ones in Silicon Valley.
You’d be amazed at how many excellent programmers there are in Eastern Europe and Russia. Once the Soviet Union fell, all that talent didn’t just disappear.
I know two senior programmers here in the States who are team leads, and manage small armies of coders in Poland and the Czech Republic. They say the code they get is very clean overall, and at a fraction of the price of domestic programmers.
Not waving the banner of outsourcing; far from it. But that’s the reality of globalization, folks…
The Voyager software is already written in Germany as far as I know.
But the point is, you get what you pay for.
Programming in general is widespread.
Hardware programming specific to musical hardware isn’t.
It requires knowing hardware address points, delays for settling, switch debounce times, MIDI, on and on.
Consider a paired hardware / software feature like autotuning.
That kind of programming isn’t easy.
So finding a good programmer that’s talented at hardware, understands synths and provides good source code often (documented in English) might not be so easy, at least at a discount price.
It’s a trust thing too- a hardware maker must provide a prototype at some point to the programmer.
While there are laws to thwart international piracy or other copyright issues, they are difficult and expensive to pursue.
A NDA agreement might be worthless.
The last thing Moog needs is to have a programmer walk off the project or walk off WITH the project.
There are even programmers who have held projects “hostage” until they received additional pay.
Since companies like Moog have to finance a project until there’s profit, if the software is slow coming, they’re paying it in interest or money tied up where it could otherwise be used.
So a programming effort that takes two years means they’ve paid for hardware and software and must wait for a certain amount of sales before they break even.
They likely won’t even purchase the parts in quantity until then and then the prices may be higher.
In times like these, that can make an initial budget end up being too small by the time an instrument is to be completed or the ultimate purchase price too tall.
It should also be noted that any bugs may be difficult to take care of if the programmer is not available later and would probably cost additional to take care of.
So there’s an interest in getting the software right the first time, yet there’s high pressure to get a unit on the market ASAP.
That does take a good programmer or programming team.
Getting things right the first time is what pros get paid for.
Holy crap! I never meant to go THIS far off topic! 
I do want to thank you all for your input, though…I am well aware of the massive undertaking developing a 100% analog polysynth requires, but I still don’t believe that it would be impossible.
I’ve heard horror stories based on the Polymoog from people like Kevin Lightner and other techs, as well as former owners. But technology has come so far since then. Is it possible that the Polymoog was ahead of its time, and just perhaps a decent one could currently be built? Just my 2 cents. 
But back on topic, I look forward to these Taurus pedals, and I am sure they will be extremely popular. I only wish I had the money for the down payment, let alone the rest of it. I hate being broke.
A Polymoog is just the wrong road to travel, in my opinion.
I owned one new too and it ended up as coffee table around 1988.
A poly could most definitely be done.
But there has to be some certain feature set that’s unique or custom method of providing the internals at a low price.
Dave Smith’s idea capitalized on a custom chip.
If he hadn’t used one, the costs would have shot up.
I’m sure someone could design a clever surface mount analog synth, even with discrete smd ics and nothing custom.
Small cpus are now very cheap and very fast.
A polyphonic digital voice could be had for little additional hardware.
So… how about 6 voices of analog layered on 6 voices of digital wavetable / samples? Sync could be added between them.
You’d get a tonic note that’s digital and perfectly in tune and one or two analog vcos to beat against it.
You could even do the unique polymoog phase modulation.
See the reason why I thought about this is because I am somewhat of a self-pronounced Idea generator.
I have been on the forums for awhile and I have seen the reccomendations and requests that users have wanted and although I know that there are aspects that I don’t know like
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Im sure Moog has a list that is a super insider secret that a product must meet before it is considered for development
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there are things about the market that I do not know
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Theres also the direction that Moog wants to take the company in that I also do not know.
I was thinking about all of the user requests and I was putting then in what I thought to be the most reasonable priority to try to figure out what the next project would be down the road.
THe things that Ive seen the most are
Hardware Sequencer
Cp251 style ENVVCA
Polysynth
Modular Synth
I evaluated each one and I got to the polysynth and thats why i said Moog didn’t fare too well diving into the polysynth parket.
I was thinking of all this in lieu of the announcement of the Taurus pedals and I was thinking about the factors that have to come into play when developing a new instrument because essentially its a business risk. One that can make or break the company and Moog has essentially been through this in its history. I wasn’t saying anything about the inabillity of the design team.
Respectfully,
Eric
Kevin, that’s a great idea! A hybrid polysynth! Glad you thought of it! 
EricK, all your points are good and valid. I am quite willing to wait out the storm, and let Moog decide what we need. They’ve done a great job thus far with the Voyager, Little Phatty, Moog Guitar(which seems to be gaining popularity for reasons not comprehendible to me), and now the Taurus pedals.
Basically, if it does something unique that no one else is doing, or doing something better than what everyone else is doing, people will buy it.
As far as their past experiences with their failed polysynths, I think that it was a matter of great idea, no technology to pull it off while making it affordable. Well, it’s been 23 years now, I believe it can be pulled off.
Of course, I’ve been wrong before…