Ideas for the Little Phatty Stage III?

[denoiser]

How about implementing modernized divide down capability based on new smd technology... Could be done a lot smaller than back in the day and would give paraphonic capability... There must be more to explore in this field ?

I recently realized that implementing a software driven 2 voice paraphonic option for the phatty should be perfectly possible and easy. In this case, both oscs will share the wave configuration (only actual configurable parameter) and volume will be set at maximum or minimum depending on the activation of the voice. Sync will be disabled and Osc 2 freq and octave configurations will be changed by software in order to represent the interval between the notes.

Of course, as in every other paraphonic, the voices will share the envelopes, filter and LFO. And will work best with legato on.

This should be possible to implement as an external midi program and using it while setting local control to off. But the midi control over the osc 2 freq parameter is only 7bits, which I guess it's not enough to sound quite in tune.

[Krinor]

I think you just described a new control processor: The Polyfooger add-on.

[JWaltman]

Biggest might actually the ability to tune OSC 2 to a perfect fifth. This is imho a BIG blunder from Moog to not allow this in the LP. (You actually can do this at the expense of another modulation possibility).

I really can't understand why moog took the decision to not be able to do this. (Or for that fact, it would be nice to have a menu tuning option for 1-2..7 notes and have the freq knob move around this setting)

[EricK]

Idea for the Phatty III:
Call it the Slim Phatty.

[Voltor07]

Idea for the Phatty III:
Call it the Slim Phatty.

I have a better idea...how about...no.

[Eric0]

The thing I would love, and other people have mentioned it, would be a Poly Phatty. Basically an updated memorymoog, with 6 or 8 voices This would actually be pretty easy for them to do:

Little Phatty architecture - Same aluminum extrusion, but longer, same end caps. 61 note keyboard. Maybe put the pitch and mod wheels up on the control panel surface to save length. (not my preference though) probably 5 to 7 RAC pots. (I'd love to have one for each bank of oscillators) Velocity and aftertouch keyboard. Also, I'd kill for a third assignable mod wheel or an assignable ribbon controller above the keyboard.

2 oscillators per voice is fine. Same basic voicing and programing as the LP, just more voices. 8 would be awesome. 6 would be enough.

"Stage" would have black or grey end caps. Black anodized aluminum extrusion, big white MOOG logo on the back legible from the audience. Yellow and red LEDs
Studio would have light blonde or ebony wood end caps, clear anodized aluminum. Subtle logo. matte on gloss or something. White and Red LEDs.
Most of the physical tooling for this already exists. Only the polyphonic circuit paths, OS and control panel would need to be designed. RAC is perfect.

$100 premium for the studio version. but not limited edition.
I'm thinking about $2500, but I don't know how much the voice circuitry costs. Competes directly with Prophet 8 and Poly-Evolver and peripherally with Virus TI keyboard and the used market in Prophet 5s.
Maybe call it the "Little Polly?"
I think this would be the killer poly-analog. I'd buy it. I can see it in my head. (hell, I can hear it.)

(Also, for the LP stage III I'd also love for them to add a wood end caps option again. How about a blacked out version: ebony ends, black ano, mostly red LEDs with white as the accent light color. Pitch/Mod wheels flash with the LF as on the Redback.)

What do people think? Could they do it for anything close to that price? Would they? Would you all buy it? Thoughts?

[Voltor07]

$100 premium for the studio version. but not limited edition.
I'm thinking about $2500, but I don't know how much the voice circuitry costs. Competes directly with Prophet 8 and Poly-Evolver and peripherally with Virus TI keyboard and the used market in Prophet 5s.
Maybe call it the "Little Polly?"
I think this would be the killer poly-analog. I'd buy it. I can see it in my head. (hell, I can hear it.)

(Also, for the LP stage III I'd also love for them to add a wood end caps option again. How about a blacked out version: ebony ends, black ano, mostly red LEDs with white as the accent light color. Pitch/Mod wheels flash with the LF as on the Redback.)

What do people think? Could they do it for anything close to that price? Would they? Would you all buy it? Thoughts?

$2500? Umm, hate to say it, but the voice boards are over $200 each! Then you have to build a massive case to put 6 or 8 boards into. So, at say, $220 x8, that's $1760 for the boards. 61 keys? Add about $500. Case? Add more money. The CP-251 case is $50...just to give an idea of what THAT would cost. Then add MORE money for profit, and you have something that will cost about a grand per voice. But I'd still buy one.

[Eric0]

Well, it would be about the size of a memorymoog, just a little shallower, and all that stuff fit in there 25 years ago. There is a lot of room inside a little phatty. I think this would be a big synth. But I am a product designer by trade, and the LP case design is very economical, compared to something like a Voyager. It's an ingenious design.

I based my cost estimate on the price of the freq box, minus the retail margin, Moog's margin, and the very high end case, but I forgot it only has one oscillator, so I'm short there. Unfortunately, I think once it's over $3000 the sales volumes probably aren't there. people are willing to pay $300 over a Mopho, for the nicer case, RAC, and VCO's vs chip voices in the LP, so let's say they'll pay $600 over a prophet 8, that puts the ceiling at $2600. Maybe it can't be done for the price, but physically it would be a way to leverage the investment of the LP case R&D into more products.

[Krinor]

I think the good people at Moog are waiting to see what Dave Smith is up to, like the rest of us. If DSI succeed in selling a Tetra Keyboard then...maybe...

[Voltor07]

Well, it would be about the size of a memorymoog, just a little shallower, and all that stuff fit in there 25 years ago.

Actually, it didn't. The MemoryMoog used chip VCO's.

There is a lot of room inside a little phatty. I think this would be a big synth. But I am a product designer by trade, and the LP case design is very economical, compared to something like a Voyager. It's an ingenious design.

Yes it is...but following this logic and having the voice boards behind the panel, how would you get multiple voices back there without making the thing 100 feet long? If you stacked them, it could work, but now we're adding depth. A 61 key keyboard might make it long enough to have two voice boards side by side...8 voices would mean 4 rows of 2 voice board pairs. Add space for heat dissipation, and you have a very deep synth.

I based my cost estimate on the price of the freq box, minus the retail margin, Moog's margin, and the very high end case, but I forgot it only has one oscillator, so I'm short there. Unfortunately, I think once it's over $3000 the sales volumes probably aren't there. people are willing to pay $300 over a Mopho, for the nicer case, RAC, and VCO's vs chip voices in the LP, so let's say they'll pay $600 over a prophet 8, that puts the ceiling at $2600. Maybe it can't be done for the price, but physically it would be a way to leverage the investment of the LP case R&D into more products.

You can't even get a Voyager for $2600...the XL is $5000...I think as long as the synth was under ten grand, there would be a market.

[Veeger]

Voltor ---- under 10 grand? I'd rather buy two Dave Smith Tetras.

There's no way I'd fork out anymore than 3500 for a Little Polly. No way - even if it sounded like a golden shower from Venus herself. I can buy two Tetras and have incredible functionality and pretty darned good sound for under 1500. And I can always put it all through an MF-101 to warm it up nicely. Nah. Lately I've become very disillusioned with the prices on Moog gear. There's NOTHING that sounds like it, this is not up for debate. It's just ridiculous in this day and age.

They would have to raise the bar RIDICULOUSLY high to make a Little Polly seem SANE to me for anything more than 3500.

God, I hate to complain like this- but really, I KNOW nothing nothing nothing sounds like a Moog - but some of the prices and sales techniques (limited edition runs.....) just gouge people silly. That said, I wouldn't trade anything I've ever bought from them.

Anybody feel me on this?

[Voltor07]

Voltor ---- under 10 grand? I'd rather buy two Dave Smith Tetras.

There's no way I'd fork out anymore than 3500 for a Little Polly. No way - even if it sounded like a golden shower from Venus herself. I can buy two Tetras and have incredible functionality and pretty darned good sound for under 1500. And I can always put it all through an MF-101 to warm it up nicely. Nah. Lately I've become very disillusioned with the prices on Moog gear. There's NOTHING that sounds like it, this is not up for debate. It's just ridiculous in this day and age.

They would have to raise the bar RIDICULOUSLY high to make a Little Polly seem SANE to me for anything more than 3500.

God, I hate to complain like this- but really, I KNOW nothing nothing nothing sounds like a Moog - but some of the prices and sales techniques (limited edition runs.....) just gouge people silly. That said, I wouldn't trade anything I've ever bought from them.

Anybody feel me on this?

Just because YOU don't want to spend more than a Voyager for a polyphonic synth from Moog doesn't mean there isn't a market that wouldn't drop 8k on a poly. A thousand dollars per voice is a bargain for such a synth, IMO. And do you know why Moog commands high prices and limited runs? Because they are a small company. They aren't RolanKorgaha that has ofices and factories all over the world. They have ONE factory.Not only that but they have a client base that is, believe it or not, rather small DUE to the prices they command. And I doubt they want to do to themselves what they did with the Memorymoog, which put them out of business in the '80's.

[Veeger]

Voltor ---- under 10 grand? I'd rather buy two Dave Smith Tetras.

There's no way I'd fork out anymore than 3500 for a Little Polly. No way - even if it sounded like a golden shower from Venus herself. I can buy two Tetras and have incredible functionality and pretty darned good sound for under 1500. And I can always put it all through an MF-101 to warm it up nicely. Nah. Lately I've become very disillusioned with the prices on Moog gear. There's NOTHING that sounds like it, this is not up for debate. It's just ridiculous in this day and age.

They would have to raise the bar RIDICULOUSLY high to make a Little Polly seem SANE to me for anything more than 3500.

God, I hate to complain like this- but really, I KNOW nothing nothing nothing sounds like a Moog - but some of the prices and sales techniques (limited edition runs.....) just gouge people silly. That said, I wouldn't trade anything I've ever bought from them.

Anybody feel me on this?

Just because YOU don't want to spend more than a Voyager for a polyphonic synth from Moog doesn't mean there isn't a market that wouldn't drop 8k on a poly. A thousand dollars per voice is a bargain for such a synth, IMO. And do you know why Moog commands high prices and limited runs? Because they are a small company. They aren't RolanKorgaha that has ofices and factories all over the world. They have ONE factory.Not only that but they have a client base that is, believe it or not, rather small DUE to the prices they command. And I doubt they want to do to themselves what they did with the Memorymoog, which put them out of business in the '80's.

Well. Yeah.

[Eric0]

I think they might have gone under anyway. The memorymoog is actually an awesome instrument, but like the very first versions of any new technology, there were technical issues that made them unreliable. In fact all analog gear was always a little glitchy. I suspect that's part of the reason it was abandoned by almost everyone when the first digital synths came out. They didn't sound quite as warm, but the fans probably didn't notice, and they always worked. I wouldn't have wanted to take a memorymoog on tour. Who knows if it will be alive for any given performance. 25 years of electronics development seems to have solved most of those problems. I now admit it is probably impossible to make a discreet 6 to 8 voice polysynth. I would actually be fine with chip voices for the oscillators, as long as they are Voltage controlled, as in the Prophet 5 and memorymoog, rather than DCOs like the DSI stuff.

I think the second big challenge to Moog and similar companies will come from software emulators that are based on physical modeling, rather than simple digitally synthesized waveforms, or samples. The new physically modeled pianos sound amazing compared to samples. It will soon be possible to physically model a Minimoog Model D down to the varnish on the wood case.

My primary desire for a Polly Phatty was that I love the LP interface so much. Also, you can't compare it to a Voyager. The Voyager is a bespoke hand-built synth, where no cost is spared, using top shelf components throughout. The LP is brilliantly designed to be affordable quality, with a lot of corners cut and design optimization to meet a price point. I'm still hoping for a polysynth in that spirit. Maybe chip voicing is one of the compromises that makes it affordable enough to actually take on a tour, with a backup, even if you're not Coldplay.

[Voltor07]

I think they might have gone under anyway. The memorymoog is actually an awesome instrument, but like the very first versions of any new technology, there were technical issues that made them unreliable. In fact all analog gear was always a little glitchy. I suspect that's part of the reason it was abandoned by almost everyone when the first digital synths came out. They didn't sound quite as warm, but the fans probably didn't notice, and they always worked. I wouldn't have wanted to take a memorymoog on tour. Who knows if it will be alive for any given performance. 25 years of electronics development seems to have solved most of those problems. I now admit it is probably impossible to make a discreet 6 to 8 voice polysynth. I would actually be fine with chip voices for the oscillators, as long as they are Voltage controlled, as in the Prophet 5 and memorymoog, rather than DCOs like the DSI stuff.

I think the second big challenge to Moog and similar companies will come from software emulators that are based on physical modeling, rather than simple digitally synthesized waveforms, or samples. The new physically modeled pianos sound amazing compared to samples. It will soon be possible to physically model a Minimoog Model D down to the varnish on the wood case.

My primary desire for a Polly Phatty was that I love the LP interface so much. Also, you can't compare it to a Voyager. The Voyager is a bespoke hand-built synth, where no cost is spared, using top shelf components throughout. The LP is brilliantly designed to be affordable quality, with a lot of corners cut and design optimization to meet a price point. I'm still hoping for a polysynth in that spirit. Maybe chip voicing is one of the compromises that makes it affordable enough to actually take on a tour, with a backup, even if you're not Coldplay.

Amen to that...but still...do you know the original price tag on a Memorymoog? It was somewhere around $5000. Which is why I have my doubts about a polysynth from Moog selling for under $8k. $5000 in the early and mid '80's was a whole ton of money. This was a time when a brand new car was going for $15k...so, yeah. I think people expect too much from Moog when they say they want a polysynth for $3500 or less...I don't see it happening. The R&D alone would be that much for a prototype, and the end result would be a monster that weighs a ton! I dunno...maybe Moog WOULD have gone under anyway, but the Memorymoog sure didn't help them any...