As many of us jump right into Forum, some might have missed the feature on the front page (http://www.moogmusic.com/content/bobs-prototypes-development-boards) which shows a bunch of really nice pictures of some Moog prototypes.
My fav is the Little Phatty, which is essentially what a “pot edition” would have been. Also amazed at the size of the board that they had under test and the fact that it was all through-hole.
Very odd that the Voyager Prototype is built on the sheet metal of the production unit (??) perhaps that was the prototype for the Old School or something else that got dropped?
Very nice pictorial.
Yes, very interesting indeed ! Thanks for the heads-up.
What strikes me is the Little Phatty prototype, on which I recognize the Voyager’s main analog board underneath some other smaller boards…
Also, the fact that a Little Phatty with all the knobs could have been done from the prototype.
That’s odd (Voyager board beneath rats nest of wires!). Maybe they were doing most of the work on the firmware and control panel using a ‘generic’ analog board to later be replaced with an all SMT board as exists today; maybe the initial thought for Little Phatty was to have a bunch of hard wired knobs to the analog board (what eventually became Old School) but no display, no touchpad, etc.
Or maybe the pictures are fake !!! : )
Funny you should write that, because the thought had crossed my mind… Maybe not fake pictures, but fake prototypes ?
Anyway, if those are real, maybe the initial idea for the Little Phatty was to take most of the Voyager’s analog board and reduce it using SMT ?
There were a lot of prototypes for the Voyager. Some from a VERY long time ago.
That pictured is not THE prototype for the Voyager.
A few pics of one of the Voyager protos.
This is the one shown at NAMM many years ago. Said not to be functional for that show, just for testing the waters. Originally no patch memory or any digital control. Same I thought for the Phatty? Was an analog only synth in the early stages. Later “marketing” adding the need for digital control and patch memory on both.
The other Voyager pictured could be the proto for the touchpad with tiltable panel, missing on the original design.
^ I got this synthesizer… It’s called the OS 