Hello 
Today I had the great priveledge of an extended try out of the Sub Phatty and Sub 37 synthesizers thanks to the helpful guys at Dawsons in Manchester, so I thought I’d write up a quick comparison. Allow me to start by saying that both synths are absolutely first class, and this post is not intended as a detraction of either. It’s mostly an explanation of why I prefer the Sub Phatty, to sound out some thoughts and potentially help those who may also be deliberating between the two.
I’ll get the price out of the way right now. Both synths use the same sound engine but the Sub 37 is a good £540 more expensive than the Sub Phatty, and so invites the question of whether it’s worth paying the extra.
The first thing that stands out about the Sub 37 is its abundance of buttons and knobs; pretty much everything you need is right there on the front panel, which is fantastic but also invites a certain amount of initial confusion. It looks a little bit complicated at first glance, even to an advanced synth user, but it doesn’t take too long to get used to and its endless possibilities are strikingly apparent after a quick twiddle with each section. Having said that, the Sub Phatty also has most of the same possibilities (such as Hold in the EGs, KB reset, multiple Glide modes, multiple Filter poles, etc), albeit via a series of button pushes that need a certain amount of decoding. Since the front panel of the Sub Phatty is much less complex and all of the essential stuff has its own button or knob, it’s a fairly even trade off. In the end, for me the Sub Phatty comes out as a pretty good balance between front panel and internal control, somewhere between the irritatingly sparse Little Phatty and the (dare I say) unnecessarily cluttered Sub 37.
With twin digital modulators and a multitude of sources and destinations, the Sub 37 is full of new possibilities in modulation, but these aren’t without their problems. I found that some of the mod destinations, for instance the filter poles, produce less than desirable digital artifacts. Indeed, if you’re after that glitchy digital sound, this is actually quite a good thing. However, if what you’re after is a more classic moog sound, you’ll probably find yourself not bothering with a lot of the modulation settings.
The presence of an onboard arpeggiator is great fun to play with, but seems like a bit of a gimmick, especially amongst all of the other features of the Sub 37. I would guess that most synth and music enthusiasts have some sort of MIDI-capable DAW which can be linked to a hardware synth for arpeggiation and sequencing, thus rendering the onboard arpeggiator an unnecessary addition to the Sub 37’s clutter. This is a bit of a moot point though because if we’re looking at these synths purely in their own right, the Sub 37 has an onboard arpeggiator, the Sub Phatty doesn’t. For me, this absolutely isn’t a problem, but for other synth players, it might be.
The Sub 37’s paraphonic mode is one of its most interesting and compelling features, even within the 20 minutes I was playing with the synth I thought of various ways that I could use it, but it wasn’t necessarily a dealbreaker. OK, so it can play twice the number of simultaneous notes than the Sub Phatty can play, but the same effect can be achieved by recording two (or more!) layers in a DAW project, and for live purposes…well, I guess it depends on the type of music you play and the setup you have. The ability to play two notes simultaneously on this kind of synthesizer might come as a revelation to some (and it is, to be fair), but generally if I need polyphony I use a fully polyphonic synth. If moog music ever create a synth with 3 or 4 (or more!) note polyphony, this just might clinch it. But in the end two notes is just, well, a bit…meh!
All of this is not to mention the fact that it doesn’t say ‘moog’ anywhere on the front panel of the Sub 37. It does have the late and great Bob Moog’s signature, which is nice, and there was just about enough space on the front panel for the designers to include the circular note logo. But this isn’t really the same as occasionally glancing across from your soundcrafting to see the word ‘moog’ in classic, rounded, friendly letters. This may not even be a consideration to some, but I like to be able to see what I’m playing with. What it lacks in frivolous gimmickry, the Sub Phatty more than makes up for in its confident air of authenticity.
Don’t get me wrong here guys, the Sub 37 is absolutely awesome, and when it was put in front of me it was like arriving on some sort of almighty mothership! However, when I was presented with the Sub Phatty…it was that little bit more like an old friend who knew exactly what I wanted.
That’s all, thanks for reading this, I hope it’s helpful.
Comments welcome.