Moog Music Forum

Hello everyone,

I'm new to this forum and I signed up really for advise. You may have had this question before so please forgive me.

I was looking at purchasing a Little Phatty Stage 2 until I came across the Sub Phatty and now I am not sure. I'm massively into sound design, cool bass sounds and great synth leads. Of course I know that both synths are more than capable of all that but how do I choose. I'm not so fussed about live performance at this stage so I'm not looking at buying a synth from that perspective. The only thing that puts me off with the Sub Phatty is the amount of keys....only 25. I do have a Dave Smith Mopho which is a well built and very nice synth but I can't help thinking that one of these Moog synths will blow the Mopho away with regards to the capablities.

I recently formed my own duo and we are influenced majorly by Depeche Mode, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys and all them great electronic acts.

Rachel

I have a Dave Smith Tetra, which has the Mopho sound, and a Sub Phatty. The two are different enough that they make a nice pair.

Choosing between the Little Phatty and the Sub Phatty isn't easy: both designs are very elegant. If you want more keys for the Sub, it's easy to plug in another keyboard. (Finding room may be not so easy.) The Little Phatty's four knobs might seem restrictive, but they're quite well thought-out and the lighted collars are a quick way to see what a patch is doing. The Sub Phatty oscillators have a brighter sound than the Little Phatty's, but I can't say which is more desirable. Some people say that the original Minimoog sounds brighter than the Voyager and Little Phatty -- in which case you could tell yourself that the Sub Phatty was truer to the vintage sound. Someone who has an original Minimoog would chuckle at us both...but it would be a chuckle, not a guffaw. Play one of the Phatties for a few weeks, and then listen to some recordings of the Minimoog; there will be no question who your synth's daddy is.

You mention that you're into sound design. The Sub Phatty probably has more scope for that -- for one thing, it has that pink noise generator -- and the extra knobs invite experimentation.

That being said, expect to like the Moog sound, but don't expect it to be more flexible than the Mopho you already have. The Mopho has three envelopes and four LFOs, compared with the Phatties' two envelopes and one LFO. The Mopho also has a built-in sequencer that can be used to modulate synth parameters as well play notes. It is a LOT of synth for the money.

Back to Moog now: the Sub Phatty can do a bunch of things that the Little Phatty can't, but (as of this writing) it can't use OSC2 to modulate OSC1. I don't know if that matters to you. It also lacks the Little Phatty's arpeggiator. This doesn't bother me -- I can use my iPad for this, or another keyboard that can send MIDI sequences -- but if you're hauling gear from place to place, less is more.

I recently traded in my Slim Phatty (rackmount Little Phatty) for the Sub Phatty for the following reasons:

Tuning:
Sub Phatty is like the Minitaur, instantly in tune, easy to fine tune or transpose to match acoustic instruments if necessary. The Little Phatty usually needs to be tuned, then warmed up to stabilize its tuning. The experience is sort of like a guitar with new strings every time you turn it on .

Interface:
All features of the Sub Phatty are quickly accessible via a knob, or hot key sequence. No menu diving. Patches are much more fun to design on the Sub Phatty.

Presets:
You can store 100 presets locally on the Little Phatty. The Sub Phatty is limited to 16. Only true downside that I can think of.

Sound Design:
The Sub Phatty is definitely superior in terms of ability to design sounds. It has much more control over envelopes, oscillator synchronization, modulation, etc, not to mention two additional oscillators (Sub oscillator, noise). There are all sorts of subtle tweak options included in the Sub Phatty...IMO the Little Phatty for serious sound design is not comparable in this area. I highly suggest you download the Sub Phatty manual and check out all of the hidden panel settings.

Sound:
This is purely subjective. The Sub Phatty is more aggressive and modern. The Slim/Little Phatty sounds more traditional...it is warmer, rounder sounding. The overdrive circuity in the Sub Phatty provides a greater variety of aggressive sounds, but the Little Phatty overdrive sounds awesome in its own right. I think you need to go try them for yourself to really see and feel the difference. If you do, keep in mind that the oscillator volume levels make a big difference (start at 6 o'clock on the oscillator volume knobs and tweak from there).

Software:
Moog is releasing an in house software standalone editor/librarian in the vein of the Minitaur editor. The editor fully supports all Minitaur patch options, I assume the same will be true for the Sub Phatty, is easy to use, and quite stable. Its primary negative is that there isn't a plugin version. The Little Phatty has two third party editor options for it, both of which quite frankly stink. No comparison.

Overall:
The Sub Phatty feels like a Little Phatty on steriods with Minitaur technology. It also bridges the gap a bit more between the Phatty series and the Voyager due to the additional oscillators and tweakable FM/Osc Sync options. The Sub Phatty is a hell of a synth, and feature wise very, very competitive to other products on the market by DSI, or VA's.

I also have DSI Mopho Keyboard and a Tetra. The Moog's are quite different in nature and will be additive rather then acting as a replacement. The DCO's on the Mopho will never sound as rich as the VCO's on the Moog...not even close. The Mopho also has more midrange in its overall sound... it sounds more tubey. The Little Phatty is warmer, the Sub Phatty is colder and much thinner when the filter is wide open. The Mopho also has more modulation options, and the envelopes might be a bit tighter (although the Sub Phatty envelopes seem to be pretty snappy). The DSI is probably a bit better for a range of percussion sounds. While not perfect, the Mopho has a decent software plugin (with VST to RTAS wrapper support), the Little Phatty plugin is pretty poor, and the Sub Phatty will only have the standalone editor (or so I think).

sp00ge wrote:Interface:
All features of the Sub Phatty are quickly accessible via a knob, or hot key sequence. No menu diving.

I agree with everything sp00ge says, but menu diving on the Slim/Little Phatty is more intuitive than pressing (what seem to me) random combinations of buttons on the Sub Phatty's preset panel. When people write about the Sub Phatty ten years from now, they're going to say, "Great sound, great interface...except for those weird button combinations!" Mind you, I like having all of the power that those button combinations give you! (Thank you, Amos.) But the buttons themselves are not, in my view, a selling point.

You know how the Ring "wants to be found"? The Sub Phatty can save and load presets, but it really wants to be played in panel mode, where the knob settings that you see are also the sounds that you hear. This was less true when you had lighted collars, to show the position of each knob for a given preset.

I believe I read that the Sub Phatty librarian was going to be both in standalone program and plugin formats.

I'm in the same predicament myself. I'm leaning towards the Sub for the hands on control, noise, sub oscillator, among a few other features. Like you the 25 keys is a turn off for me. 37 really is the bare minimum for a usable range. Being the ever cheap person I am, I'm going to wait for the Sub to start being sold second hand so I can get it fractionally for less. That also gives me plenty of time to decide.