Just thought it would be great if Moog take the touchpad from the voyager and mount it in a moogerfooger case with cv and midi outs..and add an led display for midi info
i was also thinking they could mount an assignable pitch wheel and mod wheel in there as well…
any thoughts?
Your idea is great. I want to control via computer my Mooger Fooger, without lost the “analog feel” in the sound. An Mooger Fooger that converts CV to midi will be great. In adition if this mooger fooger have a touch screen, wooow! What more I can demand???
i can’t find a picture of it but I’m pretty sure that was a early Big Briar product.
Way before the Moogerfoogers and right after Moog(synths) the first time around.
I think it may have been the very first Big Briar product, all the way back in the early 80s.
I’d also really love some kind of controller product like this. I’ll probably build one myself… but as usual, anything with a Moog logo is still best.
I’ve been looking for years for one of thos Cat-Sticks by Octave Electronics (makers of the Cat and Kitten synths). If anyone doesn’t know this product, do a google search. It was this really amazing X-Y Joystick controller with a ton of CV ins/outs/attentuators/invertors/voltage source/maybe even LFOs, etc.
…Really a cool controller product, but I’ve never seen one for sale. I’d be all over that sort of thing if I was a designer for Moog. Of course, it’s not like they’re not already busy with a bunch of other great new products.
Really looking forward to trying out the MF107.
http://bobmoog.com/gallery.html
Third row down on the left!
Note that this is not the one which currently resides at Moog Music.
I love the pic ontop where Bob is leaning on the Voyager. 
This touchpad was able for sale?? In which year???
Just out of curiosity i placed one of my moogerfoogers next to the touchpad of the voyager and the touchpad looks like it would just fit in a moogerfooger enclosure…
that would be intensely cool! it’d also give Voyager RME owners a chance to enjoy the touchpad and still maintain the racked setup.
That is so f#cking bad#ss.
I don’t know why stuff like this evokes so much enthusiasm in me… but for some reason…
It’s such a cool looking little controller. I’d love to have something like that to use with my Mfs and other modular stuff.
If you look for this website with Synapse Magazine scans… and look through some of the early 80s issues, you’ll find a quarter-page ad for this thing. It must have been one of the first Big Briar products (probably along with the Therimin in the above picture). I remember seeing the ad once-- it had to have been on that website.
I’m guessing Bob Moog started Big Briar immediately after leaving the late 70s Norlin-era Moog Music, and before going to work for Kurzviel in the mid-80s.
Thankz for the info Eric!
Yeah, no problem. The URL is actually:
http://www.cyndustries.com/synapse/intro.cfm
There are quite a bit of scans here–each issue is almost entirely reproduced–but I’m pretty certain the ad is in one of the later issues. But, if you’re a synth enthusiast, it will be a pleasure reading through all of them. I really wish there was a magazine like this today…
There was at least one other great synth magazine from the same era as Synapse, called Polyphony. It was published at first by Paia. There’s a website for it, as well, that promises to eventually host full scans of each issue-- but none are up yet.
How much would you pay for a 'fooger touchpad?
Well, I’d think that they could build one pretty inexpensively. I don’t see why it would be much more expensive to make than any of the other moogers. Probably like $300, maybe.
I bet those touch-pads aren’t real cheap. I believe the one on the Voyager is a fiber-optic type of touchpad, different from the resistive-material ribbon controllers on the Micro and Poly.
i’d think it would be very simple to make, as far as circuits go. Just two or three voltage sources, attentuators, and invertors, etc. Pretty simple stuff. I’d like to make one myself-- just like the Big Briar one, but I don’t know where to source the actual touchpad. I don’t know, but I’d think that there might be some kind of digital circuitry involved with the fiber optic one, like on the Voyager. I’d probably try to find a pressure resistive type pad, if I was gonna build one. Don’t know how easy they are to come by. I couldn’t really find one by just doing a google search.
I actually already have a resistive strip–thats almost the perfect size for a small ribbon controller. I e-mailed the company that makes them and they sent me a sample. But I’d much prefer to find one that could do X-Y attentuation, or X-Y-Z.
Eric, here are a couple places that make various sensors. Nothing exactly like the Voyager touchpad, but lots of options.
http://infusionsystems.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/24/products_id/72
http://www.electrotap.com/sensors/
You can see the ad for the Big Briar Touch Plate here:
try here..
Thanks. Yes, I’ve seen these. This is the exact same kind that’s in the Voyager. It’s a fiber-optic device and I suspect that it needs some kind of digital processor to function. Not the kind of device that easily lends itself to CV applications, necessarily. ’
I think the links that Dr Floyd posted would be more applicable to basic CV controller projects-- although I didn’t look at them real carefully yet.
I’m still working on my DIY modular… controllers will have to wait. But I still like to investigate different options, for when I do get the chance to think about building it.
Actually the Tactex was abandoned on the Voyager late in its development (it would have provided a pressure controller too), and Bob resorted to an analog solution, seems maybe the Touchplate from the Big Briar days.
I read in a bunch of different places that the Voyager touch-pad was this tactex device. I guess you really can’t believe everything you read.
I wonder then what kind of pad the Voyager uses?
Incidentally, I live in NY, and I went to see a multi-media project last night at this film institution here in Manhattan. It was a Czec film from the late 60s and there were a bunch of musicians performing the sound track to it live. It was really amazing, but of particular note, one of the players had a Buchla Music Easel. It was absolutely beautiful-- and I’d never seen one in person before.
But I was talking to the guy with the Buchla for several minutes after the performance, and he was explaining a little about the touch plates used on Buchla synths: Some kind of variable capacitance mechanism. I didn’t understand it exactly. But it sure looked and sounded amazing.
He said he bought it new from Donald Buchla in 1976. He had some memroy boards for it as well…