The Grandmother lacks a second adsr, but because it is semi-modular, you can add another full ADSR envelope, another LFO.... The semi-modularity cannot be overlooked, or overstated! I added two extra ADSR's and another LFO AND a bunch of mults for next to nothing (thank you Behri, you murderer), expanding the Grandmother's sound range. I find the Grandmother to cut through the mix way more than any other gear I have. Like, I know it is apples to oranges, or chalk and cheese, but my Virus b, saw wave, filter wide open, and any other digi-manipulation deep-menu options that could obscure the Virus's sound, the Moog Grandmother KILLS the Virus. The Virus sound like it is 10 feet away, filter wide open, it sounds distant, blurry, dull, and the Moog Grandmother sounds like she's in your pituitary gland, like right up in there. The notion that the old or analog gear in general is "warm" meaning dull sounding, and that digital is bright, is the exact opposite of my experience, and why I like analog, it is brighter, higher frequencies are more intact, more distinct, more present as you use it here. Honestly, I think people just repeat stupid sheet they hear, never even listening to anything. Anyway. Thanks for the vid, but damn, bad news about Moog. I'm gutted.
First of all, you are absolutely correct a lot of digital sounds worse in higher registers because it really requires quite a bit of processing power to avoid digital aliasing. You either oversample at 96kHz or better yet 192kHz, or use use complex windowed sinc and BLEP computations to avoid aliasing. Many digital synths don't, and it sounds worse. So you are spot on there. More importantly, "Grandmother Kills Virus" sounds like an alternative band name from 20 years back 🤔
Yep, the Moogs have top quality oscillators and filters which track faithfully even into very low end frequencies. It’s very easy as you say to plug in additional envelopes or LFOs and the patch points tap into the most useful parts of the circuitry: I use my Grandmother as a bridge between the MIDI world of my Octatrack / DAW and the CV world of my Eurorack gear and other synths. The lack of a patch point for the mod-wheel is one negative - CV control over the reverb would have been cool, too.
You just unlocked a memory for me... that prodigy has a very distinct sync sound. It sounds identical to a sample I used on the old Playstation program MTV Music Generator. (It was called Music 2000 outside of the US) That sync was dead on, they probably used a prodigy. Thanks for unlocking that memory lol.
Hey @StarskyCarr. Great video as always. I wanted to point out an oft overlooked fact about the old vs new quality/manufacturing complaint trope. Most people dont think about the fact that a large proportion of defective/badly built older gear is no longer with us. People gave up on it and got rid of it in the intervening years. So all the vintage gear that is still around tends to have been well maintained and had less faults to begin with, which really skews the perception of quality. If x% of old moogs or oberheims or korgs ended up needing major repairs or were just plain borked, chances are they are now in a landfill somewhere, so the quality of the remaining pieces 40 years later is in a way "concentrated" with mainly the "good ones" surviving. Stradivarius likely made a whole lot of lesser quality instruments too, with faults that became apparent in the intervening years. Those instruments didnt stand the test of time and 400 years later, every remaining Strad is incredible because the bad ones have been filtered out by time. So comparing old to new build quality and consistency is in large part a guessing game. What percentage of 1970s minimoogs that were built well enough to last until the 2020s (will we ever know this?) can only really be compared with the percentage of 2020s moogs that last until the 2070s!
that's a very good point. At some point they were worthless and repairs simply weren't economically viable. A bit like this GM.. with a broken pitch bend its probably worth £400 - to get it fixed will cost £100-£150 or more if it needs a whole board - so potentially £200 which is 50% of the value. Simply not worth it unless I can fix it myself. If anything else goes wrong its spares or repair! I also think that modern manufacturing 'should' in theory be better. A state of the art automated plant with all its monitoring systems an QC will be more reliable than hand soldering. Modern components are also more reliable (tighter tolerances might not be best for the tone but that's another story). You won't find a new Boeing or Airbus being hand soldered for good reason. I think perhaps the number of flaws found on modern synths is often for similar reasons to yours... there's a lot more of them. Having said that.. like my pitchblende - if you need to replace a whole board thats no longer manufactured you're screwed... and good luck trying to replace one of those tiny components!
I bought a Prodigy from a 2nd hand shop in Cardiff in 1987 for £99 and I loved it. Although in mint cosmetic condition, a couple of the pots went quite crackly. I also never really liked how the knobs felt (they feel a bit cheap compared to the Minimoog). I do have a Grandmother now (and a Voyager) and I absolutely love it. I tend to prefer a lower cut off frequency so the relatively rolled off highs don’t bother me, personally. I find the Grandmother a lot nicer to use in general.
Thanks for the review Some remarks: 1 the attentuator without input gives out +-5 volt which can be used to open up the vcf a bit thereby minimizing the differences in high between the two 2 you can use it also to modulate the vco2 freq when in sync but you can also use the modwheel if set properly plus two patchcables ( pm me for details) Overall : i used to own a prodigy that i sold as it’s a very limited one trick pony synth . Compare with the grandmother : semimodulair , 3th oscillator, noisegenerator (!), seq and arp, midi , keyboard transpose, 2 years warranty, a bass to give you chickenskin, velocity , diverse trigger modes etcetc Seems clear enough why i sold the prodigy, bought the grandmother and never looked back at all 🌞
its pretty good considering the age.. It looks like at some point in the distant past someone tied to clean it with something that started to remove the paint and stopped just in time!
I had a similar experience with the Grandmother of stuff just breaking or not being built properly to begin with. Sounds amazing, design is beautiful, keyboard is top notch. But for some reason it was riddled with QC issues. Was my first Moog, and I've gone through more exchanges/repairs than I'd like to admit, so that part is disappointing. But it's just such a characterful synth that I still love it. Current one has some sketchy pots, but everything works!
Forgive me I haven't watched the whole video yet - the less-bright sound is because of something to do with the volume knob module on the grandmother that rolls off the highs. I have a matriarch and it's the same there. The solution is to use the Eurorack out on the back - it is a brighter output. Unfortunately the volume knob wont affect the eurorack output. Boosting the highs very slightly with a mixer, you can get that the main output to match the eurorack out. It's convenient to have a 1/4 inch out and a volume knob - otherwise I'd always use the eurorack outs. You can find more info on this in the moog "mother family" forums.
Assuming it’s controlling an op-amp, I guess the roll-off is in there. But maybe it’s just a straight potentiometer in the output doing it directly, their frequency response can drop-off sometimes becoming less linear.
If you bypass the filter and go straight to VCA you don’t get the high roll off, so it seems it is just the filter default roll off. I sometimes bypass and route to my Behringer model D filter instead to get that snap and retain more highs.
The Prodigy, starting at 4:18 is brighter, granted, but the Grandmother is more of a muscle car. She's gruntyer. Growlyer. More punchy, solid, brick sheet-housey. The brightness of the Prodigy is appreciated, granted. But I've never had to put a high self on any Grandmother track to gain some brightness.
My original demo of the Gm is full of praise for the sound .. and I still am. It’s just not a prodigy / not that that’s a ‘bad’ thing just not the same. The GM is staying.
Moog gutted the company that was employee owned before the acquisition, they've shifted production to outside sources,: if this isn't the death of the company as we know it, its pretty close
The employee-owned moniker was a marketing ploy. It was either go out of business or sell to someone who could keep the doors over. The Muse is awesome and actually affordable. Hopefully they continue releasing great products.
My first synth. Unfortunately, as a scratching DJ, I knew nothing about synthesis. But that's where it all started. Unfortunately I had to sell it at the end of the 90s, the rent was more important. Times change, things got better. Today I own the grandmother. Thanks for the great tutorial!
The Keyboard is a half octave shorter, but the Sub Phatty (25) IMO is a replacement for the Prodigy. At least for me it is. I really missed that SYNC sound when my Prodigy gave up the ghost. For me, the Sub does it pretty nicely. Plus two envelopes a handful of memories, and a few $$$ cheaper. The Moog SYNC sound is definitely different to the Sequential Prophet 5/Pro One that The Cars and Pink Floyd used.
Not to overshadow the fact that this is another great video - certainly of interest to anyone who cares about Moogs and certainly relevant to the ongoing debate of New Vs. Old synths - but I was absolutely gutted to learn here that Moog has done layoffs and is moving production out of the U.S. Speaking as an American, I can tell you that I spend a lot of time feeling ashamed about all the things America "exports" to the rest of the world (war, policy, etc.) but ONE THING WE'VE ALWAYS HAD was MOOG. If I visited France or the UK, I could throw on that iconic black/white "Moog" T-shirt, as a sort of reminder that not everything from the US is bad news for the rest of the world. Now, unfortunately, that's being taken away, and we're all the sadder for it. I can tell you this, (and I know it will sound pre-mature) -- The quality WILL take a hit, and the brand name WILL take a massive hit from this. Changes like this are happening everywhere, across many different industries, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that (and this is only my opinion) - I think the company put a lot of eggs in the Moog Sound Studio basket, and it hasn't really paid off as they'd hoped. I own one (along with a Grandmother Dark, and a Subsequent 37, but I feel if they had come out with some sort of entirely new $1,600.00-$2,000-ish synth WITH PRESETS and possibly (dare I say it?!??) Midi AND audio over USB, they'd have done better than they have with the Sound Studio. Yes, I know the the Sub 37 has presets - and I will never let go of mine, but I'm talking about something completely new, and more on parallel with perhaps the Take 5. (And let's be honest: No MIDI on the DFAM? REALLY??? Uhm... Why, exactly? I have a DFAM, but no longer use it (Glancing at Behringer Edge.) My Perkons has MIDI... Why not the DFAM? So, yes. I think that, to the extent there might be some "blame" attributable to Moog for this sad development, I feel that "blame" would lie in certain decisions that they made based more on stubbornness(?) or hubris(?) than on accepting and understanding the fact that, even they they are MOOG, they still must evolve. Of course, the knee-jerk reaction to that, from a lot of people, will be "AH, but then it wouldn't be true to what Moog really is." Well, perhaps some truth to that, but it would have been a LOT "truer to what Moog is" than having your Matriarch or (and I cringe at this) MINIMOOG made in Southeast Asia. Again - just my opinion.
I personally never had a problem with a piece of Moog equipment, but I know some others have. I'm not saying they were perfect. However, I think there's going to be a difference in how much time a low wage earner in Southeast Asia will spend sitting there voicing an oscillator vs. some old guy in Asheville who owns a stake in the company, and cares about this iconic brand. If place of origin (or politics) isn't an issue, we might all be better off with Behringer - and I say that with some seriousness. If you're in the UK, tell me how you'd feel about a Bentley manufactured in Viet Nam?@@Heathcliff_hensel
I love the Moog sound. Massive lifelong fan. But before I bought my Grandmother recently I did heavy research and knew there was a quality control issue. Unsurprisingly I have to get it serviced already. Guess it will be from a local shop. I don’t think Moog figured out how to scale and meet production costs when compared to the likes of Behringer who are able to make solid gear of similar quality at fraction of cost. Maybe ironic, maybe not, but as sad as it is… a handful of high cost workers making synths clutching soldering irons, no matter how passionate they may be, isn’t going to cut it in todays competitive landscape. It’s too bad Moog never found a way to really work as a business. Almost unfathomable.
I own the Prodigy and I would really really like to like the GrandMother but something doesn’t cut it for me. It has much more capabilities but yet, I prefer my old simpler one. The sound is huge, the sync is one of the wildest and most beautiful I know and I modified it a little bit so I can FM the filter for more sounds. I never found a good tap point to get the env2 to modulate the osc2 pitch properly though. It would probably need some more extensive tweaking.
I bought my Prodigy new in 1980 (it has the CV ports and S-Trigger on the back). I had a failed envelope IC while it was under warranty but since then it's been faultless, apart from a fuse. I had an engineer give it an eyeball last year to check out capacitor health and he said that the electronics were all in great condition... My LP Redback's MIDI ports died but I managed to get a new board (reflashing was a pain). And SO FAR my M32, DFAM, Subharmonicon and Werkstatt have been fine. But who knows what the future holds...
...I've owned both Prodigy and Grandmother, and the one thing Prodigy does immensely better than Grandmother is its oscillator sync feature, with the pitch wheel assigned to modulating the sync, allowing the modulation wheel to modulate other parameters...but Prodigy has such a cheap feeling keyboard!
Thanks Starsky, just a heads up that the Grandmother can do the self-oscillating filter tracking via the 1:1 filter tracking switch! No need for patch cables
Haha … I know - I’ve actually got it in front of me at the moment- making a vid vs the Behringer Model 15. I can’t believe I forgot that. Sometimes my brain leaves the station once I press record. I also forgot the pitch bend on the Prodigy worked in the sync when I made that demo! Cheers 😂🤦♂️😃
Strangely I like the sound of the Grandmother a bit more, and I can always EQ and add more stuff because it's modular. However reliability and repairability are such big factors. I cannot decide.
Nothing ‘wrong’ with the GM sound - I love it - I’d buy it over the Prodigy every time - BuT this is about using it as a replacement and showing the differences. Nothing strange about preferring the Gm 😀for use ability I’d go with old nanna Moog I mean new nanna Moog..
but then you can’t use the filter? Sound obvious but if you want a really punchy bass tone that has a bright transient and drops to a luscious resonant bass… you can’t. So yeah obviously if you take out the filter from the chain it can’t dull the signal… but then you’ve not got access to all those tones
When I look at the GrandMother, I’m not sure Prodigy comes to mind. Possibly the performing act Prodigy, but I don’t know about the synthesizer model of the same name. (Nirk nirk!) What comes to mind whenever I look at it is actually the Sonic Six which came from when RA Moog Inc. merged with Musonics and created (the original) Moog Music Inc. circa 1971. Of course, appearances may be where the similarity ends. The only time I touched a Prodigy was back in 2001. I was kind of disappointed when I discovered the pitch bend wheel wasn’t spring-loaded. That made it kind of like the pitch bend knob on the initial run of ARP synths.
Grandmother is empty and hollow. Prodigy is centred and more vibrant. Grandmother also feels quite plasticy. I wish this wasn't the case. I like the idea of a semi modular at an affordable price, but its just a little cheap and hollow.
What makes Moog valuable to me is the quality of their products. If they are going to compromise the quality for cheaper components, they will kill the goose.
My first synthesiser! I saved up for months, added my Christmas money... £210 in January 1981. Chose it over a Yamaha CS5 or Korg MS10 because of its two oscillators, but its other limitations (no CV/Gate, one oscillator's range shorter than the other, for example) proved a pain. Nice sound, but not much potential.
Sometimes when you try to replace one thing with another an expect similar results, it just isn't the same. Prodigy vs GM. This is a nice segue for Moog moving off shore for manufacture. In this case it can only help the company so in essence gives a new life-force for the company rather than what it was already challenged with, which was poor profits. Cheaper manufacture doesn't necessarily mean worse, it means more sustainable for company, which is better for people who want these products. If it also means cheaper prices for the common person, then so be it. I can only imagine how much a computer would cost if was assembled in the US, whether people would praise homegrown pride, or complain about the absurd pricing due to local workforce wages. Now this analogy doesn't work properly due to PC components being of modular design and can be put together without any real skillset. You can save a few pennies by building yourself which is a bonus, swap this analogy to a car and then you really start to see the savings, and this is where most things now become affordable, where as before, we could only dream of. If Moog where smart, they could beat Behringer at their own game. Quality synthesis @ a budget price. /end rant
While you were doing the Sync comparison, there was definitely something a little nicer about the sound of the prodigy over the grandmother. Can’t quantify it. Might just be a personal thing.
Really interesting comparison. Thanks for posting! It's a little hard to tell from the angle but it looks like you might have KBD Track switched to 1:1 for the Grandmother. I believe this explains the weirdness you encountered @8:36. When you patched the keyboard out into the cutoff in you were doubling the voltage sent to the cutoff. I'm also wondering if this accounts for the difference between the oscillators in the upper frequencies. Depending on the keyboard octave, even with the Filt Cutoff is fully open, a low octave from your keyboard is going to be bringing that cutoff down a bit. I just tested on my own Grandmother with noise up, filter open, and switching that kbd track on and off. The filter definitely engages with 1:1 and a lower octave on the keyboard.
Then again maybe I'm wrong. Either way, it's a damn shame about Moog. They messed up last year by having unionization talks out in the open. Should have made sure they had the support of the workers before even giving management a hint of their intent.
I have the mg-1, which is basically a prodigy. I absolutely love it, it gets super angry sounding. I unfortunately need to figure out why the volume output is so low though!
Ciao, I've noticed that when you switch on the Sync on the Prodigy, the key tune changes down like 1 or 2 semitones. It happens also on mine, and i was wondering if there is something worng that needs to be adjusted. I do not think this is normal, playing live and trying to retune when Sync is on .... what do you think?
Will do. I’ve since checked the outputs from the pitch pot and it’s not doing anything so maybe that’s the answer! Maybe it’s loose and not responding. Fingers crossed…. Btw what’s the set screw? … where is it 🤷♂️🤦♂️😂?
hey the keys on the old moog have long hinges and you can press on the top of the black key so easily !!! why am i not suprised! the tp/9s found on the modern moog ..... why is tp9/s in all the synthesizer i want ..... whhhhhhhyyyyyyyyy
Moog’s QC has been very suspect. Look at the rubber melting on the Sub 37 and the sides melting on the Sub Phatty. Both are phenomenal synths, but Jesus. Hopefully the rubber doesn’t melt on my Subsequent 37.
I do not understand this “moving production to a place where costs are cheaper” means “they won’t be able to make good products anymore.” Like yes, that can happen. But musical instruments, especially the mostly analog products Moog makes, are incredibly simple. Far more advanced electronics get made in places like China or South Korea. There is 0 reason why Moog couldn’t maintain there production quality. If Moog’s quality declines that would solely be a choice Moog makes. It wouldn’t be because “pRoDucTioN gOt MoVeD tO AsIA”
to be clear - I'm of the opinion that anyone suggesting products produced in the the Far East are inferior is borderline racist.. or just plain racist! What I'm saying here is I hope they use the savings to invest in the R&D.
I’m pretty abreast of all the gear head gossip on forums, social media, YT, etc. I haven’t really heard anyone, at least no one with a significant voice, say that they are concerned Moog won’t be able to make good products anymore? I’m not sure where you came up with that? The issues that people have voiced have to do with projecting what the future direction of products will be: e.g., Are they going to start offering cheaper, less premium built products along the lines of Behringer … in order to compete with them, or just carve out a new product space for Moog? Or, as Mr. Carr suggests, will they put some of the money they get from better overhead and higher profit margins towards innovating new products in the spirit of the Moog tradition? We don’t know the answers to these questions, so people are going to speculate. It’s certainly not a guarantee that Moog will just continue on without any hitches on the same path they always have. There was a time, for instance, when Roland only made analog synths. But when they realized how much more profitable and easier it is to produce cheaper built digital products … the rest is history.
Well, usually it happens out of the same reason they moved production. Profit. That's a problem with unhinged capitalism. But in addition to that many of these East Asian nations simply just do not protect their workers the way governments in West protects it's own workers. And culturally speaking when it comes to those things their people are not like Western workers. In the West individuality and the rights of an individual are far more important. I feel that contributs to the whole idea of right to pursue capital, even if it comes at the expense of others. That's why they felt okay with moving. In the Asia there is more of a they are a group. One makes sacrifice for the group. Kind of contributes why production suffers. Those workers have no good reason to get personally invested into making a great product. Imagine going to work, doing long hours and not getting treated right. In the West if a worker isn't doing great you deal with that one worker. Both cultures have ups and downs, and companies abuse the both. In that way it is almost inherent that products quality will go to crapper once in Asia. Not guaranteed but to me it looks that's what happens. Yes they can make products that are great. Lenovo has a line of laptops that are great. A Chinese native company. But historically when production moved from West to East quality suffered. That's just my personal feeling.
My sub37 filter pot broke, moog sent a replacement BOARD. Not just the pot. Nice support! But this shows that modern SMD components aren't just replaced, you ditch the pcb and replace it. I get pcbs manufactured in China. Brilliant robot mounted job. I got the same manufactured in US. They had most subparts made in Vietnam, final assembly in the US. End quality was a bit worse.
I must be getting old. On my laptop speakers I believed to hear the oscillator roll-off difference, but on my DT 1990 Pro the two synths are (almost) identical.
Haha.. I’m an earlier edit I had some text in there that said the same.. laptop and headphones were so similar but the monitors were different. It’s why I show the FA … mainly to give myself confidence in what I’m saying 😂
@@StarskyCarr I can definitely hear a difference in the triangle waves. I did a quick hearing test here on RU-vid, and my ears are deemed approx. 45 yo which is excellent since the rest of me is 8 years older.
When you bring up warranty, do we know In Music will honor said warranties? And if Asheville factory is gutted are they still doing warranty and repairs there? These are questions of let's wait and see I guess? I personally have no plans to buy any new Moog stuff until "we" know what all that looks like but regardless Grandmother is great and a bargain can be found on the used market.
@@StarskyCarr "should" is the optimum word, hopefully Asheville stays open for returns, otherwise where will we have to ship synths for repair? Also speaking of "shoulds", the build quality should be better, you shouldn't already have had to have a pot replaced and wheel not working now within 2 years, that doesn't build confidence, hopefully that can get better overseas under new management. Really hard to predict what will or will not happen but I guess we shall hope for the best.
Damn, I really hoped you got someones grandmother to try get a cool sound out of a synth. Maybe even play God Save the King or something, if she knew how to play. Maybe one day... it remains a dream.
Sheeeet, I've needed to send in my Grandmother for service, for over a year now... I wonder if I even can anymore? I'm fuched! I fuched up! STUPID STUPID STUPID!
only Moog I have left in my collection is the Voyager, just wasnt impressed over time with the synths afterwords. Maybe they will take a Behringer approach but who knows. Employess got crap from what I read even though they owned 49%, shame.
I guess you forgot about the key tracking switch in the Grandmother’s filter section. Set to 1:1 it should track on key without the need to patch anything.
Haha yes I totally did 😂 when that camera’s rolling and the memory cards filling up as the battery is depleting and next door have just got the lawnmower out of the garage while your cats crying to get back in and your mother’s only just left before you have to pick up the kids - there are things that slip your mind! True story 😂 I had a gap in the mayhem to record or forget it.
I did.. no joy. I’ve since tested the pot outputs and nothing’s registering. 🥲 maybe a new kit needed. Someone’s mentioned a screw… maybe somethings lose so the pots not being manipulated by the wheel. Time to open her up again.
@@StarskyCarr BTW - I bought the GM when it first came out. It took me three tries to get a working one. Mine's been stable ever since, but it was the first Moog I bought that made me think they were cutting corners. (My last Moog before that was a Voyager).
@@phazerbrainsmy glide is borked too. Calibration didn’t resolve it. Now and OSC is acting up. I really wish someone can explain how there are so many, and many types of, failures with the GM. Makes me worry she wasn’t built to last.
@@sibbyeskie I had to do the calibration twice to get mine working again - so may be worth trying once more. Yeah, I worry about it too - great sounding synth but doesn't seem to be built well. I wonder if quality will get worse or better now that Moog is moving to China.
There wers < 100 emplyess total and it was 49% owned by them , even if the MOOG name/company was sold for only 50m, that would be about a 1/4 of a mil payout for each employee. I'm guessing thats enough to retire
That's not how it works, you needed to be there for a specific amount of time before your shares had any value, and if you think you can retire on 250K, erm no.
If they build em like my Mpc one with button failure. They won’t last six months . IN MUSIC = Cowboy company. And to prove I know what I’m talking about 🥴, I Sold my prodigy for £170 to analogue solutions albeit a while ago.
Dude, this is news to me. Catastrophic news. I bought a Behri Crave, in a Choved fever haze one night when someone or something on Amazon sent me message asking if I wanted to buy a new, but likely grey nnarket, Behri Crave at a ridiculously low price, only issue being it'd take a week to get to me, and it would have the wrong powersupply. That wasn't an issue for me, I didn't even know if I was hallucinating due to fairly extreme illness, with seriously a fever for days, and so much pain in my joints all I could do was try to lay as still as possible... and the price was so low... I couldn't pass it up, even though, like many of us now, I've got enough monosynths for my purposes. I didn't even know if this was real, a fever dream hallucination, some weird hack of Amazon... I didn't know, but I agreed, and in a week, an amazon package arrived... with a new Behri Crave in it. I was so surprised it was real, that it wasn't a scam. I also didn't know, at the time, that the Crave was a knock off of Moog's semi-modular monosynth, but I didn't really care, it was an analog (mostly... the envelope, doh!) monosynth, and it sounded pretty good, and more importantly, I could use it with other modular gear, and price to value was insane, like I got an analog osc with 2 waveforms, an Lfo, an Envelope, a lowpass and a highpass (if you can call it that) filter, a two out unbuffered mult, an attenuator with some quirks, a sequencer, with each device being less than, literally now, not the English literally, but actual literally, 1/10th the price that I would have paid for individual eurocrack devices. Maybe 1/20th the price. I mean there are deal, and there are deals... but paying 1/10th the price... that's like picking up a Moog Prodigy for $100... it's beyond a good deal, it's literally (the english version) a steal. AND, I was about to buy an Behri Edge, knowing it is a knock off of the Moog, just waiting for them to actually arrive on our shores.... for a long time now. I wasn't buying it because it was a knock off, but I just wanted the functionality that the Edge had, and it was at a price that I barely, and maybe couldn't, afford. My drum machine game is really weak... I'm a who oar for synths and fx pedals. I'm really in need of analog, so 1:1 wysiwyg, live tweakable percussion. But to my point, the morality of all this. 4 years ago, I bought a Moog Grandmother on store credit... and next month will be the last interest free, $19 payment. I really couldn't afford the Grandmother, I'm disabled, so have no income, no vehicle now, it's in need of repairs I couldn't possibly afford, and even the parts are probably out of my reach, if I could affect the repairs myself... food is difficult to afford, then, back when I bought the Moog, but now with dollar inflation being so insane, beef is seriously becoming out of my reach (by design of course, one less consumer of cow farts, if you can believe that proper gander and pseudoscience soft-kill). But I've loved the Moog Grandmother. It's sound is heads and shoulders above anything else that I have or have access to. I love square wave based sounds... and the GMA absolutely kills square and pulse waved sounds. And the Grandmother is semi-modular, it got me into modular, which I'd been interested in since the Eurorack format started to gain a little market traction, but I'd abstained because of the increasingly ridiculous costs for modular components... I was poor back then, but still had some savings from my lawyering days... I should have snatched up as much as I could have back then, the dollar was about 3 times as strong, at least, and non-English literally. And I would have been able to enjoy and work with a modular system for all of these years. But anyway, I loved the Grandmother as she was, but with the semi-modular capabilities should could do a lot more than a fixed architecture fully analog synth. AND, as Behri entered the modular game, I could, barely again, afford 2 more envelopes, an extra LFO, a shyte tun of mults, and some gates, which really expanded what the Grandmother could do. I basically have mostly a Moog Matriarch with one less osc (though with the Crave's $10 fully pulse widthable osc in the mix...) for so little... modular is awesome! But more than the sound and functionality, the Grandmother is such a "premium" musical instrument. It is a joy to work with, I love it's keybed, I write better on it, literally, I play better on it, I'm more creative on it, weird, I know, but I feel better, freer on it, the knobs are nice and solid, stiff, with exactly the right amount of turning resistance. Just everything feels better on the Moog versus other contemporary and vintage (early to mid 80's) synths. Way better than a mouse and vst's, even with 128 value stepped midi controller potentiometers and faders. Do I deserve, or have a need of the Moog luxury? NO, but I've loved the Moog Grandmother. Did I help kill Moog by buying Behri... I bet I did.... In my tiny, one consumer, one purchase way. But I'm sure thousands upon thousands of people bought the Behri knock offs rather than the Moog originals... and collectively we killed Moog. But the Grandmother was a sort of exception, at the time I bought her, there weren't used units on the physical market near me, and I'm absolutely done with e-bay and Reverb, I can't even remember the last time I bought something from either source that wasn't either outright non-functional, or broken in some significant, but not immediately apparent way. People are just shit nowadays, everybody is a scam artist. So, I only buy used locally, and I've never seen a single piece of used Moog gear here in 8 years, non-english, actual literally. But at the time, the Moog Grandmother, new, wasn't that absurdly priced, for what capabilities she offered, never minding the "premium" or luxury price mark up, she was a fair deal, $ wise, making the luxury mark up negligible. But soon after the world got cho-crazy, and the US economy was imploded, like building seven. Moog prices got really out of hand, absurd even... the death knell. When your company is drowning, you lower your prices, not raise them, duh. Because of my health and thereby financial situation, I'm more of a used Behringer gear type of consumer. Not a Moog consumer, but it warmed my heart knowing that Moog was out there, making really well made, well designed, well thought out, and well cared for gear, even if I couldn't afford it. I'm gutted at the news. And I've got a little blood on my hands for the murder of Moog. But I will say... the Mother, D-Fam, and the rest in that line... come on, they were overpriced from the get go, and just got way out of hand. It's not that people are cheapskates, and just went for the lowest common denominator, Moog's pricing pushed them along in that direction. If Moog's prices were a little more reasonable, I think people would rather have saved up another couple months, and bought Moog gear, gear that they'd be reasonably assured to last their lifetime, rather than the Behri semi-crap gear, which granted is 1000 times better than before, literally, but still, it does not inspire confidence at all, and there are some corners cut, like digi envelops and what not. Man. I feel bad about Moog. I've seen this company die twice now. Sucks.
Keep in mind that Moog was partly employee-owned, so the decision to sell to InMusic was made by all of them. I daresay they'd already be out of business otherwise. (UPDATE: Just noticed that you mentioned the employee ownership thing in your video.)
moog was 49% employee owned, so the decision was made by the 51% owners and has nothing to do with the employees making decisions. Moog was 'employee owned' but not in any way that mattered to decision making. Saying that the decision was made by all of them is not true, and distorts what actually happened here.
Just bought a subsequent 37. Didnt really have the money. But no way im buying a new moog hand built by 9 year old asian children. Ill only look the other way when i need to upgrade my macbook. 😂
I’ve had issues with my Minimoog, voyager, sub37 and grandmother. … but no one wanted to hear it as the company was so beloved. Maybe now it’s no longer a family owned business it’s time for reflection and a bit more honesty. Saying anything negative has always been a big NO! Even in releasing this video I instantly lost subscribers as I’m not mr 💯 positivity about the brand. And yet… I’ve probably bought more from them than everyone that gets annoyed when I’m just relaying my honest real-life experience! It’s a weird old place this internet 😂
Before buying my Sub I asked Moog what the iffy stuff was with filter pot/encoder. Got a reply within hours that after SN xyz the pot/encoder pcb issue had been solved.
The amount of brand cache Moog has is immense, Thats what makes the fact it was mismanaged into a buyout even worse. I like some of their products but the brand ethos has been iffy for so long @@StarskyCarr