So we had our Moog tour today...what an incredible place with incredibly nice people. For starters: Moog's one and only factory in the entire world is in Asheville, NC. Every pedal, synth and guitar Moog ships worldwide is made in this one factory with a staff of about 35 people. It's amazing how such a relatively small operation does so much international business.
I was lucky enough to be able to contact Mike Adams, the president of Moog and he set up the tour for me, but there were about 5 other people touring, so I believe anyone can get a tour. Just call up and ask! You'll need to schedule one in advance, but everyone there was so accommodating.
Jillian outside the storefront
i thought this was funny...this was in the small lot behind the factory
Artsy shot of the storefront & a Little Phatty...the whole place really pays homage to Bob Moog. Mike has done an amazing job in keeping Bob's vision. From the analog circuitry to the superior build quality to the forward thinking ethos, Mike has pushed Moog forward while still respecting it's history.
Then comes the factory....what a place! Every single item being built is made to order. They are so busy and swamped with orders that nothing is built before it's ordered simply because they don't have the time! Its a testament to the demand for this classic product.
These racks of bins were EVERYWHERE...
This is the Voyager area...guys were just getting back to work from their break
There are numerous Voyager models out...the XL, the rack mount, the now discontinued Old School model (cos presets are for wimps!). We actually got to see one of the last Old School Voyagers that was getting ready to be shipped out.
some crazy notes
Each and every thing in the factory has to be tuned after assembly (since they are all analog)...assembly of a Voyager (depending on what type of Voyager) takes 2-3 hours. Then tuning takes another 1-2 hours. Then every piece (every single thing in the factory) gets "burned in"...a current is run through the item for about 24 hours (IIRC) to make sure all the components are "talking" to each other correctly. The racks of items you see are all racks of stuff getting burned in. Here's the Voyagers
Controllers on the Mario Kart
The next section was the Etherwave/Moogerfooger area. Again, every Moogerfooger & Theremin gets tuned and burned in. Moogerfoogers take about 30-45 minutes to tune. Moogerfoogers are basically pieces of a modular synth in stomp box form...they're not just for guitars! You can run bass, synth, drum machines, theremins, even vocals through them! Not only do they sound incredible, but they are highly tweakable due to their ability to be controlled with Control Voltages.
Cluster Fluxs being burned in
Then came the Slim Phatty section. There were a TON of Slim Phattys everywhere...apparently they are extremely popular due to their affordable price and the fact that you can MIDI chain them together & have a polyphonic Phatty
This guy was tuning a Slim Phatty. Note the oscilloscope and strobe tuner. Since the Slim Phatty has no keyboard, he was using a Little Phatty as the keyboard to tune the Slim.
the Slim Phatty area
Speaking of Phattys, this next area was where the Little Phattys were usually built, but today they were building Tauruses! Those pallets of boxes are ALL Little Phatty chassis.
And then comes the E1 guitars! This is the work bench where they are assembled and set up. I also got to take some great photos of the underside of the pickups up close! You can see that each string gets its own coil. I also got some great photos of the piezo saddles.
This is where they do mods, repairs & recallibrations. While I was there I had my 104Z delay modded with the Spillover mod. Basically, on a stock Moog delay, when you bypass the effects, the delay trails are cut. The Spillover mod adds a switch on the top that allows you to either allow the delay trails to finish their trails after you bypass the effect or you can have the pedal function as stock.
Since the synths are all analog, they do need to be tuned and recallibrated every so often. On a Voyager, with average use, you want to have it recallibrated about every 10 years. If it sees a lot of strenuous use (on tour for instance), recallibration may be necessary as often as every 5 years.
Then we saw the shipping warehouse. Holy bleep. The amount of Moog toys in here is mind boggling....what's more mind boggling is the fact that there are TWO guys that oversee the entire warehouse shipping for the entire world. I can't begin to explain how much stuff was in this warehouse...incredible stuff. There were probably at least a dozen of these huge shelves packed to the ceiling. In the second photo, all those boxes with the black ends are Slim Phatty boxes.
Just an incredible experience. Highly recommend you go check it out if you ever get the chance. And here's me playing a Little Phatty with some Moogerfoogers.
