Moog Guitar Quick Start Guide

[moogmusic]

Get a head start on your Moog Guitar explorations with The Moog Guitar Quick Start Guide. You'll hit the ground running with these clearly illustrated common settings. Remember, they're just starting points. Experiment and explore!

http://www.moogmusic.com/manuals/mooggu ... _guide.pdf

[EricK]

I noticed in the Video that I saw that you are running the guitar there through a Vox AC30(?) Is there any reason why you chose that particular amp?



Also, something that I think is important, is if the engineers themselves would give us an unofficial endorsement of what system is appropriate to get the Critical Bass from the Taurus. So name people have so many different opinions. Can we get a specific checklist to look for when choosing an amp that will pump out the Death Bass that the Taurus is famous for.

I think this is something true with even the Voyager and Phatty, noone knows better than you guys what would perfectly compliment the capabillities of your equipment.


Eric

[MarkM]

Nothing wrong with the Vox AC30.

[EricK]

Im curious because I had considered getting one. They look great, but I haven't tried them out yet. My buddy said that that is an amp in a suit!

Eric

[Klopfgeist]

An AC30 won't pump out bass, but it would be great at adding some harmonic growl to synth sounds. If you want to run the Voyager through an amp for recording purposes (to get some air moving), I would suggest a JC-120 Jazz Chorus as a starting point. I got a vintage one at a pawn shop for a very good price, but mine seems to have aftermarket speakers (some electro voice pa 12" with gigantic magnets that make the amp near impossible to lift). So with my speakers, the JC-120 puts out very little low end, but it warms the sound up in a different way then just sticking the voyager through a tube amp, and the chorus/vibrato in stereo is nice. Now I would never use this live as it has a very narrow frequency response, but it adds a cool flavor for recording purposes.

[mayidunk]

Brian May of Queen uses the AC30 all the time, it's his signature sound. He usually uses a stack (12) of them when playing live.

[EricK]

Actually I was considering something like this for guitar. The guitar that I play is a cross between Folkish/Spanish on the acoustic, and Funk and bluesy on electric.

My sister is getting a Marshall Haze 40x Tube amp, but I have been considering Vox when I get around to purchasing a guitar amp and found it interesting that whomever brought that amp into Moog for the Guitar must have had a particular reason (perhaps for its clean tones).

I don't know what a tube Bass amp Head would do for a Taurus or Voyager's low register, but it would be interesting. Any all Tube PA systems out there still?





Eric

[Klopfgeist]

No there aren't any tube pa systems, because the focus for live sound products has been making things clean, lightweight and powerful. Clean solid state power amps are used because they don't require all the weight and distortion that comes along with tubes. Lightweight transformers are advancing fairly quickly. I have a rack with two 850 watt qsc amps and one 1000 watt carvin amp, and that rack is very hard to lift, but shortly after I got those amps, carvin came out with a new line of power amps that has a picture of a guy comfortably holding about 6 amps.

[Klopfgeist]

I think plugging a bass synth into a tube amp would make it seem "louder" because of the compression induced by the distortion, but I think it would cut off the real low bass frequencies but make the bass seem fuller because of the missing fundamental and the extra harmonics/overtones. I'll try putting my voyager through an Ampeg V4 (not a bass amp but unbelievably powerful) when I get home and report the results.

[Klopfgeist]

Ok, so I put the Voyager through the Ampeg with a Marshall 4x12 w/V30's. Not tons of bass, but a great full sound. Now the Ampeg is not meant to distort, it was made for clean raw power, so I am going to have to try it through some other amps as well (Orange, Marshall, and Sovtek). I also plugged it into my Carvin bass stack (solid state amp, two 600 watt amps with a crossover into a 4x10 and 1x18) and I put all the eq flat, set up the crossover for the Voyager, cranked it up, and... the walls started shaking and I could feel the power in my chest, and then a giant pitcher fell out of a closed glass cabinet 6 feet onto the floor (luckily it didn't break)!

[ark]

...is the Acoustic Image Coda. I have an earlier model of this amp, and it's amazing. 10-inch downward firing woofer is enough to shake the floor with bass guitar, and the full frequency range makes it work well with synths of all kinds.