Thread for MF-108 pics/recordings

The Moog Forum Moogerfooger Forum
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New packaging (I like it) and the book, aside from being a bit light as compared to other MF docs is very well laid out and on fancy paper, etc. Feels like it’s made of woven hemp or something : )

Busy busy innards. The board is about as complicated as it could be. A daughter card up towards the jacks and another very very small add-on that looked to be microsurgery; last minute mod. You can see the dip switches on the upper left quadrant of the board, and a mysterious 6 or 7x2 header pin that may one day allow for mods of one type or another. A few solder points here and there also.

The sound !!! absolutely incredible. I had a Effectrode VibraChorus that was incredibly warm and musical but didn’t have 1/10th of the dynamics of the Chorus half of this beast. I sold it and bought an Effectrode Phase-o-matic Deluxe primarily because it has a V.C.O (CV in for external waveform) but it again didn’t do it for me. To be fair, I’m a bass player and the dynamics of my style of bass range from dry, muted half-rounds (fender) to bright MusicMan preamp and only the latter did the trick.

In the absence of recording and posting, all I can say is that it is well beyond anything that I’ve ever heard from a single pedal. It’s actually a bit difficult to control !! If I could have a single pedal on my board, this would be it; the rhythmic flexibility afforded by the LFO and the extremes through which the + or - infinity can reach actually take the place of a delay pedal as far as generating sonically derived rhythm is concerned.

Impossible for me to express without a few examples.

So far, I spent about 2 hrs with my MusicMan mono into a Mesa amp and about 1/2 hr. with the String section of my Opus 3 (mono output into the MF-108 into my board).

Looking fwd to sharing some soon.

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I think I see the footprint for the Rate LED immediately to the left of the DIP switch. With a bit of circuit tracing (or help from Moog :slight_smile:) you might be able to pinpoint a site for an LFO out mod. It has three legs, and I am guessing it’s red-green with the tertiary colour orange used for MIDI sync’d. Perhaps green represents tap-tempo?

Or from what you are saying, this provision may already be there, but not brought out onto the panel.

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I have #21, next off the line, I guess…

Did you happen to notice on that 7x2 pin, was one of the pins absent/broken off? Mine’s that way, but I couldn’t tell from your pic whether it’s the same on yours.

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Threads like this make me want mine even more!!

C’mon Nova¤musik!!

Glad to hear that a bassist with similar tastes is finding this to be a good fit, I was reluctant about pulling the trigger! But it’s MOOG, they just don’t let you down!

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Pin broken off… yes, that is by design. The plug that attached here is ‘keyed’ (likely) so it will only go on one way. Likely used for diags or to upload base code, possibly for expansion.

And msg to Alien8 and anybody else that is hesitant… DO IT! Pull the trigger because as Moog said, this may be a limited release engagement. Whether that means a few (low) hundred or several years is unknown but I’ve attached two more pics that might be of interest. I can tell you that these guys have genuine Panasonic MN3007 BBD chips (a pair of them) which are hand soldered to the front of the board. Each does 51.2ms of 1024 stages. And btw: there’s room for a third chip but I think Moog did the right thing by only putting two on there (thus making them go farther for more of us : ).
And for those curious, there are a number of test points clearly labeled on the board such as:

FEEDBACK CV
LEVEL CV (upper left)
MIX CV
and… something that simply says CLK (Clock?) (lower right)
And for all of those that don’t care about this mumbo jumbo and just want to hear it… I’m one step closer and expect to put something up tomorrow (again, it’s going to be bass so don’t get your hopes up too much). Am sure some other folks having just received theirs will post shortly as well.

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@ EMwhite

Wtf! I just discovered that MF-106 will be actually MF-106M !!! Take a look at the BOX! There is no more Delay, but there is 106!!! Hahahahahahahaha! :smiling_imp:

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Maybe everything now will be midified.

Hopefully it will be an Envgen/VCA with midi triggering…interesting stuff that could be done with that.



Where are those recordings?!?

EricK

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Oh wow - good catch! I wonder whether that’s a portent or a red herring…

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At this point, what we need most is a VCA and ADSR. Is there need for them to go MIDI? Or is there something that we need more than that?
Maybe a MIDI/Tap tempo analog delay??? I still use moogers mostly on floor, but I would prefer CP based VCA/ADSR. I would prefer at least 3 VCAs. So I’m brainstorming on .com or Modcan… but this things just need too many modules, housings and power modules to work properly… This is the reason why I love moogers! CP is a really good example of flexible little gadget, that can do so many things.
I wish MF-106(M) would be 2xVCA/ADSR with some additional functions in a CP stile box.
Second choice for me is Multimode filter! I really miss HPF, and Notch!

Ok, I know that this subject is about Cluster Flux, so here is my question.
Can anyone tell me, how does classic chorus sound respond with guitar. The main reason I don’t use chorus effects is the delay time…
so when you play a note, chorus produce a note a few milliseconds after the note you played. It feels like a latency.
Instead of using chorus I use MF-104z with a little modulation on a delay time.
But I’m just wondering how can you program the cluster flux to avoid this filling of “latency”.
Any comments are very welcome!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m buying it anyway! :wink:

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Not to mention ref in the manual to a midi clock source such as the MP-102

Last I knew there was no such multipedal “102” and with the 201 just discontinued…

Pg 4. Picture

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UOu!! :open_mouth: But ti could be just a mistake… 201-102??? But Yeah! Mp-102. Great! Maybe an expender for 201!!! That would be great!

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Here’s ‘something’.

About ten minutes of my getting to know this thing. Took a while to get something that would record and sound even halfway decent. Not much musical here but I’ll get there. For those into experimental, knob tweaking, etc. there’s something here for you also. Unfortunately, the stereo levels were a good 45 degrees off center and there is some clipping. But it’s something. I didn’t mention it in the SoundCloud comments but the Mix knob was at 2 o’clock.

http://soundcloud.com/emwhite/emwhites-mf-108m-first

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Audio clip:

Wow! Very interesting.

I have a test scenario for you. See what happens to the LFO rate if you tweak any params…

On the murf I had, I wanted to take the beat pattern, and from a static white noise, I wanted to slowly turn the mix amount into the beat. When I turned the mix knob it slowed the rate.

So if you tweak the hell out of the mix, will that slow the rate? Will sending an lfo to any cv inputs slow the rate?

The difference between the flux and the murf is likely the LFO. SInce the murf probably had a digital one, thats probably why its processor was lagged with knob tweaking.

So Tweak all the params but the mix (even 3 knobs at once) send it cv’s also and see if that slows the rate down any.

This is what I would do to any Midi based fooger that I got.


I could slow the Midimurf’s tempo in half by tweaking knobs. After an os update, it only slightly corrected the problem. Sending fast LFO’s to the cv inputs from the ringmod or cp251 and turning the knobs cut the rate in half.

Eric

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As far as the manual goes…what I have seen of it doesn’t look like Greg’s work. I wonder if he authored it, or if he just changed formats. He was usually pretty damn meticulous about spelling errors and such.

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If it is Greg’s work (it still may be), he’s operating under constraints for a certain style of artwork, a sparse layout, etc. There is little if any theory but a manual like this will appeal more to a stompbox buyer… not a terrible idea.

As for your test case, I’ll give it a shot tomorrow but I already know the answer, rate will change to compensate for the fact that the BBDs are only so deep.

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The one thing that I notice in both EMwhite’s recording (thank-you by the way!!! You did a good job of exploring the pedal for us!) and the Sweetwater video is a high pitched “ringmodish” sound from the clusterflux. I might be hearing some internet aliasing, but I’m pretty sure I’m not - can anyone clarify this? It’s really subtle in the Sweetwater vid, and more pronounced in EMwhites, and I’m guessing that is because it becomes more apparent for lower frequency input. (it’s neither good or bad, just a part of it’s sound…)

Watching the video from Create digital music you can hear it between 6:05 and 7:15…

Can anyone confirm this for me? - that you hear it from the live pedal, not over the internet…

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It would likely help to have seen the knobs/settings during the recording. I tried setting up my camera on Wednesday but couldn’t get a good shot of the pedal and have the camera setup at an appropriate height to see the pedal based on how everything is wired in my studio (it’s a mess at the moment).

But this might help (based on settings on pages 6-9 in the manual. I also recorded something using “vibrato” which I really really like alot but I didn’t like my sloppy playing so nixed it.

0:00-0:36 “classic flanging”
0:36-1:42: “classic chorus”
{don’t know}
2:12-4:44 “random flange”
4:45-7:27 “ramp wave pitch mod” {with tweaking}
7:28-8:13 “classic chorus” with very little feedback
8:14-end “ramp wave pitch mod” with slower rate and higher feedback until the slapping part where it’s backed off around 8:47; then up again anybodies guess after that.

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Has anyone investigated the ‘spillover’ mode that was previously advertised as enabling some drone? Mmmmmmm, I love me some DRONE.

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Well I have had a wonderful experience exploring this pedal, when I’ve had time in my hectic schedule.

It can do some beautiful things resembling “through-zero flanging” and “barber-pole flanging” as well as many variations on “Shepard’s Tone,” and “Shepard’s-Risset Glissandos.” It seems to go well beyond defined chorus-flange territory. :sunglasses:

I would love to do a demo . . . but I’m 'fraid I’m fooger-rich and everything else po-dunk. :frowning: I have an iphone 4, but it makes mince-meat of everything! I’m pretty much puro analog as far as music equipment right now.

Thus, I would love to know if someone can figure out how to make the smooth-random waveform appear analog-ly. I was thinking that perhaps a post-Sine wave either via 102, 103 or CP-251 would do the trick or is there a DULLARD code?! For now, I just keep the mix low when using random to not squash the beauty of my contrapuntal lines, but still evoke an ever-evolving movement. :confused:

I was listening to TV on the Radio’s “Nine Types of Light” and the beautifully impressionistic guitar textures on that album and wondered if perhaps they acquired a prototype of this pedal, although they may have accomplished some similar with Ringmod or Phaser in the Feedback loops in a 104Z, SD, etc.

Yes, Alien 8. When you dial the time knob > 8 in either chorus or flanger mode, and > 2 on the feedback knob (both negative and positive), plus have the lfo amount < 4, you will get a raspy hiss and other high-pitched sounds on certain wave forms when they hit their peak frequency/modulation. It resembled a snake hissing, and it becomes mixed with the whole sound. Pretty annoying if its unwanted, but sometimes it sound cool. Its hard to control with EP-2s. It’s a very weird quirk, but probably a function of the BBD’s.

I may not be exact, but those settings seemed to produce all the weird noise. Perhaps it is just my pedal.

I have no idea why Moog hasn’t designed their own superior BBDS or other technology without the ridiculous squealing and hissing noises these antique chips produce when overloaded. I know Fulltone tried, and ultimately failed, but if anyone can do it, its Moog! :stuck_out_tongue:

I want two, but I am going to wait and see if they will fix any of these bugs.

It seems to produce a drone with the feedback all the way up. If you run in stereo and turn the wet mix down, the right channel will just generate wave-form based noise, and your left channel will be your guitar or whatever. The right channel may be effected by what you play, but if the LFO amount is cranked, its not noticeable. This is what I can accomplish non-MIDI. :smiley:

Also, I would like to point out that while the manual indicated that there is little noticeable difference between negative and positive feedback when in chorus mode; I personally can hear a world of subtlety there. Perhaps its because I primarily use solid state amplifiers.

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Has anyone tried the feedback loop yet?

I have . . . and it defied all my expectations. It is Face-meltingly awesome. I really get the sense now that this machine is truly unlimited. The Feedback loops does not bypass the selected LFO waveform, instead you are able to put anything inside the loop and it interacts with the LFO in amazing ways.

GC has all its Monster Power Studio Link Send and Return cables on clearance in the stores, at least they did at my local locations. Get them now and try it Fellow Fluxers! :smiley: