Subsequent 37 vs. Subsequent 37

[andreas]

Hey everyone,

We've been using the Moog Subsequent 37 for a video game project and absolutely love it. One of the best things about this synth besides that raw, vintage tone is how easy it is to share patches across studios. I bought mine about 9 months ago. It sounds gritty, powerful and full of character/life. Almost like a 60 year old machine that has been played every day of its life.

To streamline our workflow, the other composer picked up a Subsequent 37 as well so we could both work from our own studios. But when I finally visited and we A/B’d the two units we were both shocked at how different they sound.

My unit sounds alive and raw, his, on the other hand sounds much cleaner, almost too perfect like a software emulation of mine. On top of that, my unit is outputting about 6dB more level than his, using the exact same patches and gain structure.

We even loaded up the stock Moog factory presets for comparison and they still don’t sound the same across both units.

Our next step is to pick up a demo unit from a store here in Stockholm to A/B against both of ours. That should help us figure out if this is just natural unit-to-unit variation, or if something’s off with one of them.. Possibly a calibration or hardware revision issue.

Has anyone else experienced this? Could this be a calibration issue? Or is it possible that Moog made subtle hardware changes between manufacturing runs?

Any insight would be super helpful. We’d love to get these units sounding more consistent.

Thanks in advance!

[stiiiiiiive]

Hey Andreas, welcome to the forum!

About the output level discrepancy, I don't know anything. But about the rawness/cleanness, I think a difference in calibration could be the cause of your observations.

[T-S]

@Andreas
This is interesting. When I was doing research on the Subsequent 37 before purchasing one, I read a number of YouTube comments that mentioned what you're talking about: some people thought it sounded too clean, others thought it sounded really raw and/or gritty. Were you able to do a comparison with a third unit? I'd be interested in hearing the results.

@stiiiiiiive
RE: calibration - is there a setting that can be adjusted, and if so, how does one access it? Is there an internal trim pot?

[stiiiiiiive]

Calibration is a software based routine. Check the manual for some guidance