Moog Music Forum

As a current owner of an Slim Phatty, I am wondering if anyone in the know can provide any viable reasons to pick up a Minitaur. The product demo suggests that there is some sort of phase lock when using dual oscillators providing a tighter sound for basses, but I am not certain if that is an accurate assessment. Any thoughts?

Eventually a Moogmate here explained on another topic that the phase issue was solved on the Taurus simply by having differents max volumes for oscillators. No phase cancellation possilbe this way.

I'll try to link the post...

EDIT: there.

Well another point is the architecture is different, and Taurus produce bassier/ballier sounds that Phatties.
You'll find the exact info on the other topic as well. It deals with coupling between VCO/VCF/VCA.

sp00ge wrote:As a current owner of an Slim Phatty, I am wondering if anyone in
the know can provide any viable reasons to pick up a Minitaur.

If you twiddle the knobs on any synth long enough you become
intimately familiar with its sonic "character".

As a several-year Little Phatty owner/tweaker...when I played the
Minitaur, I instantly knew I was playing something quite different
than the Little Phatty/Slim Phatty.

No one else can make the argument that "you" will need these
differences, but I can attest that the Minitaur/Taurus 3 offers
significantly different colors for your crayon box.

And I personally enjoy having lots of crayons to color with.

_DemonDan_ wrote: And I personally enjoy having lots of crayons to color with.

Yep. I've got the SP, and love it. I'm wanting to add another moog into my setup, and the Minitaur can be a dedicated deep-bass beast, freeing up the phatty for other duties. It'll be a day-one purchase for me.

I have and love my SP, and I preordered a MInitaur from Novamusik. I have always loved the Taurus 3, but it's HUGE. This little bad boy will sit on my desktop and crank out major league baselines! As mentioned above, that will free up my SP for other duties. I can't wait til it ships.

Seems like a great sounding synth!
But it's not programmable, is it?
No patches can be saved?
No possibility to dump an as-is preset?

No presets, but you can tweak (program) to your hearts content. The original Mini-Moog, and the modulars before it, also had no patch storage, but rather, sheets of paper to write your patches on. The Minitaur follows that tradition- and you could create your own Patch cheat sheets easily enough. I too will own a Minitaur. Should sit well in my little synth mix of a Little Phatty, DSI MoPho, and Acces Virus Kb.

Yes, it follows a nice little vintage tradition and that has a 'cool attitude' to it.
But the downside is that it makes it less useful for live and recording use, disregarding how excellent it sounds.
You would need some kind of computer editor to quickly change between patches, unless you are working with more experimental stuff live.

Assar wrote:Yes, it follows a nice little vintage tradition and that has a 'cool attitude' to it.
But the downside is that it makes it less useful for live and recording use, disregarding how excellent it sounds.
You would need some kind of computer editor to quickly change between patches, unless you are working with more experimental stuff live.

I'd Have to disagree. I use an LP in a recording enviroment and when I have a band in that wants to fire it up, they will run around the presets for a bit, but when they ask for a specific sound, I usually turn it to the calibration preset and pull something up on the fly. Of course, doing this method over an over, you quickly learn all of the subtle nuances and exactly how to go back later and dial that sound in again. That said, dialing in sounds on the Minitaur on the fly will be exponentially easier than an LP. There is not a lot to tweak. And chances are, someone is not going to be using the Minitaur as a lead or FX synth but rather as a bass synth and probably only going to tweak a couple of things here or there during a performance or recording. Think of it as a guitar. Some have various knobs and switches which can give the guitar subtle differences depending on their setting, but, do not have a preset. The player just memorizes what works and what doesnt.

Presets are for the weak!!!

Well, I think my LP is a much more variable instrument than any of my guitars (including all the stomp boxes and rig). A guitar is a guitar, with some variations in sound. A synth can be so much more, play a wider range of roles in an arrangement.
But I agree that the LP is easy to tweak. The Minitaur is propably even easier. But if you don't want to tweak - just play - in a live situation, it has its limitations when it comes to switching sounds.

There is nothing strange in that, just a fact. Disregarding how nice or easy it is to tweak. Or what attitude you chose to have (I'm to old to let attitude play a part in my decisions ...)

You won't need a computer to set up a patch on the minitaur. Just a sequencer that can send MIDI CCs.

Sir Nose wrote:You won't need a computer to set up a patch on the minitaur. Just a sequencer that can send MIDI CCs.

Sequencer ... computer ... whatever.
An external device.

Being a midi module, an external device to control it is a must. Just choose the right tool for your needs. Enables it to be more flexible and cheaper.

As it is, it requires some kind of programmable external midi device.
It's not enough with just - as an example - a foot pedal midi controller, which would have been nice.

Are you missing my point or is it just fanboy reactions?
I mean, I really like my Moog but I *can* see the down side even with Moog stuff when they are there ...