Moog Taurus III analog monophonic bass pedal synthesizer
t3-1
 t1-and-t3
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Last Update 05-15-2015
Legacy Sound
 An Invitation
 T3 Features
 Moment of Truth
 Critical A/B
 Why doesn't my T3 sound like my old T1?
 Pitch Range?
 "I'll have what he's having"

The mere mention of "Taurus" in the synthesizer world used to evoke lamentation of an instrument that has eluded replication.  The famous Taurus I bass synthesizer was renowned for its huge solid low end fundamental (aka oomphTM) and throaty roar of its signature preset.  Many have attempted to duplicate that sound on other synthesizers (myself included) and failed - you could get that low end or that throaty roar, but not both (if you cannot hear that oomphTM, then your speakers are not good bass reproducers and you may need subwoofers).  The closest I got was the Moog Source and Alesis Andromeda.  And because the Taurus I operated on the oddball v/hz tracking and did not have CV or trigger I/O, there was no decent MIDI retrofit for it.

Moog Music had periodically hinted at a Taurus reissue since 2002.  I had been the recipient of internal polls and had gave them my enthusiastic support behind it.  In at least one interview when asked about a Taurus reissue, Bob Moog hadn't denied the possibility and used the occasion to ask if customers wanted one because of the interface or the sound (it was the latter).  Alas Bob passed away before he was able to pursue such a project.  But shortly before he left our world, Bob brought in a very capable replacement in Cyril Lance who earned a PhD in Engineering Physics at Cornell, the same curriculum upon which Bob acquired his PhD.

At the NAMM show following Dr. Moog's departure, the oft-repeated question at the booth was when was Moog Music going to make a Taurus reissue.  Marketing wasn't sure that there was enough demand to justify the expense of bringing it to market.  So in November 2008 they publically announced that if they could get 250 customers to commit a $500 deposit towards the purchase, then they would proceed with development of the product.  To their surprise, they got their 250 commitments (including me) within a month.  As time passed Moog threw out occasional teasers, including one video of Cyril in mid-development of the new Taurus.

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"Why makes the Taurus so special?"

I had studied the Taurus I schematics and service manual and had uncovered several features that were responsible for the sound of the original Taurus I:
What separates the Taurus from other analog monosynths is the feedback architecture of the filter.  Like any tube guitar amp, the feedback architecture plays a large part in the "character" of the filter.  This is why Taurus sounds different from a Minimoog from a Rogue from a Phatty from a Memorymoog from a Voyager from a..

Due to the AC coupling inside the feedback path of the filter, that creates some special interaction that gives the Taurus its voice which isn't reproduceable with EQ or other processor.  Boosting the bass EQ on your mixer does not get the same effect, it is a dynamic bass boost that varies with filter cutoff.

The Taurus also uses CA3080 OTAs which are NOT high fidelity components - because the signal is pretty hot going into the 3080s, they add some subtle distortion themselves, much like a low gm tube.  There's a 3080 in the filter feedback path, and another in the VCA.  If you probe the output with a scope you can see the curvature of the ramp waveform which is OTA distortion.

The sound generated by these features could not be reproduced on other Moog synthesizers, not the Voyager or Phatty or Minimoog or Prodigy or Rogue or et al.  They are too polite and not as aggressive as the Taurus.  OTAs are the building block of VCAs and VCFs.  The OTAs of those years were not high fidelity or low noise.  Modern OTAs have corrected those shortcomings, and as a consequence those vintage OTAs were discontinued and are not available today.  Years passed before most people recognized that those vintage OTAs contributed a large part to that "dirty sound" of vintage synthesizers.  A smart designer could replicate the sound of vintage dirty OTAs with modern OTAs if he knew what to tweak...

So I had shared these revelations on the Moog discussion forums, half-hoping that the folks at Moog would pick up on these.  I also had written my webpage on the Taurus I years before. top

An invitation from Moog Music

A year elapsed as the project progressed to the prototype pre-production stage.  Then what to my unbelieving eyes, there did appear an email from Moog Music inviting me to come to the Moogworks for a critical listening test on the prototypes they just built.  They requested that I bring along my own Taurus I pedals.  I was quite honored to help them out.

When I got there in my rental Toyota Rav4 (it was winter weather and I didn't trust my compact car with over 200,000 miles!), I saw their brand new Taurus III next to a battered Taurus I they had used for analysis.  I asked Cyril many technical questions to how faithful the T3 circuit was to the original.  We are both EEs and it turned out he shares my keen interest in the sonics of circuitry.  Cyril was fanatical about disecting the T1 and he maniacally replicated all the critical circuit details - including the v/hz oscillator scaling and the dirty sounding OTAs.  This is a Good Sign.  They asked where my pedals were and I pointed to the original vintage factory case - they've never seen a case like that.  When I opened the case the staff was impressed of the clean condition of my pedals.

Our session covered two days.  Day one was in the Moog Lab doing initial A/B comparision and firming up design errors, while day two was in a professional recording studio for critical A/B comparision with the pre-production product.  Moog Music videotaped the sessions (in which the key players received "titles") for prosperity in a YouTube video.  There wasn't a lot of time in that they wanted to debut the Taurus III at the winter NAMM show, which was three weeks away!

I would had been happy to have my input accepted from the forum discussions - I never once dreamed that I would be asked to provide the "golden ears" for the project!  Turned out Moog Music president Mike Adams had remembered some discussions we have had in the past.  One, while discussing future plans over lunch he thought they could repackage the Voyager into a bass pedal format for a Taurus reissue.  I told him that wouldn't be a faithful reissue because of circuit differences that contribute to the sound - I explained to him the differences in the feedback architecture in the filter between Taurus and Voyager as well as the dirty vs clean sounding VCAs.  Two, I told Mike of a Taurus pedal patch I had submitted for the Alesis Andromeda factory library as part of my sound design work.  When synthesizer fanatic extraordinaire Brian Kehew (who also consulted with Moog Music) heard that Taurus patch, he was impressed by its authenticity.  And the kicker is, I was basing that patch upon study of the schematics and upon examples I had heard on CDs - I did not own Taurus pedals at that time! top

Features of the Taurus III

"Chief Technical Alchemist" Cyril Lance was maniacal about faithfully replicating the original Taurus I.  All the T1 features are intact.  Some 21st century features were implemented.  Other proposed features - like hard sync and audio FM to the filter - were not added for fear that those additions to the circuit would compromise the sound.  I believe that these decisions were justified given the end product.  I *really* would had liked an 18 note pedalboard like my Taurus II Controller, but that would had made the metal case components larger and raised the cost.  Again, since this is a MIDI instrument this is a compromise I can live with.

The original Taurus I was a simple VCO->VCF->VCA system as far as architecture.  The Taurus III duplicated the dual ramp oscillators, lowpass "ladder filter" VCF with resonance, ADS (shared decay/release control) for the VCF, and AR envelopes for the VCA along with the peculiarly labeled "sustain" control which is actually patch volume.  Even the quirky behavior of the filter EG is replicated.  Dave Luce, the designer of the original Taurus I, reasoned that the EGs of a bass pedal synthesizer should emulate the transient response of a standup acoustic bass IE as the attack becomes longer the peak transient is lowered.  This is not how traditional EGs operate, but it is how the original Taurus I filter EG operated.

Cyril also replicated the BEAT control of the Taurus I which varied the scaling of oscillator two.  "Beat" is not anything related to drumboxes, it is that pleasant chorus-like effect of two slightly detuned audio oscillators.  The BEAT control allowed you to have more frequency beating at high notes and lower beating at low notes, a unique feature not found on other moog synthesizers.  Many claim this as a reason why the V/hz oscillators are better for bass synthesizers, but you can get the same variance from traditional V/oct oscillators that offer a linear V/hz CV input.  In fact, a V/hz oscillator circuit is identical to a V/oct circuit sans the linear voltage to exponential current converter.

The original Taurus I had a pair of foot slidepots for volume and filter cutoff; the Taurus III replicates these using large footwheels.  These wheels have an integrated illuminated line so you can tell where that control position is at a glance.  The filter cutoff wheel is now the control wheel in which any patch parameter can be assigned to it, and it has a bar graph that gives a visual indication of the current setting of the parameter.  To keep the cost reasonable, the interface from the Phatty is borrowed - there is a set of buttons for each parameter.  You select the button, then manipulate it with either the control wheel or the endless encoder by the LCD.  The endless encoder has a pushbutton action integrated into the control for confirming menu prompts and changing menu navigations.  The footwheel has three editing modes 1) a "pass-through" editing mode in which the parameter doesn't change until the wheel "passes through" the value of the original parameter, 2) "track" in which footwheel movements will manipulate the parameter from its current value, and 3) "snap" in which the value of the parameter snaps to the current position of the footwheel.  Pass Through is nice as it prevents accidental edits from vibrations from a large sound system.  The encoder instantly edits the parameter and in practice works better for fine editing any parameter (especially oscillator tuning).

The seven footswitches of the Taurus I are replicated (four presets plus glide, decay, octave) with two more added - bank select and transpose/PGM.  There are thirteen banks (A through M) of four patches (52 total); you select the bank by pressing the BANK footswitch then pressing a pedal key (lowest C is bank A, highest C is bank M).  Intuitive!  The first four presets from the Taurus I (bank A) cannot be overwritten, the remaining 48 are user-programmable.  The PGM mode changes the function of the glide/decay/octave buttons to arpeggiator note latch on/off and tap tempos for the LFO and arpeggiator.

Cyril even replicated a subtle feature that I was not aware of.  In addition to the foot slidepot, the Taurus I had a rear panel master volume pot.  This rear panel control not only varied the output volume, it also lowered the overdrive of the OTA in the final VCA.  This feature is under System Utilities/Master Volume.

New features added to the Taurus III are USB/MIDI I/O, arpeggiator & LFO (both MIDI syncable), and CV/Trigger inputs.  There are CV inputs for pitch, filter, and volume; these inputs are V/oct (the pitch CV is converted to v/hz internally).  Neat additions for those times you so wanted to attach a step sequencer to your Taurus I.  USB/MIDI is a modern feature and the MIDI implementation is very comprehensive (including NRPN remote editing and patch dumps).  The LFO offers square, triangle, and rising/falling ramp with a frequency range from 0.01 to 100hz routable to pitch and/or filter, and the footwheel can act as a mod wheel to control modulation depth.

While I am not normally an arpeggiator user, their implementation in the Taurus III is really practical in that you can set the notes with your feet, and then you can transpose the pattern with your feet. It's actually pretty easy to use.
 
The control panel buttons have bi-color LEDs to indicate which parameter level is active.  "Level 1" is the synthesizer parameters and the buttons glow red.  "Level 2" glows yellow for LFO and arpeggiator parameters.  One nice feature of the footwheel is that it can be assigned any parameter when that patch is recalled.  If you want filter cutoff assigned to the footwheel when the patch is recalled, make sure that filter cutoff is the last parameter that is edited before saving the patch.  Patches can be named.  As a nod to its intended purpose, the LCD is an extra large character type that can be read from a standing position with the pedals on the floor.

Amos Gaynes has implemented some cool MIDI features in the Taurus III.  The pedal keys are velocity sensitive - although they have no effect on the T3 voice, velocity is handy for external MIDI control.  The Taurus III can operate as polyphonic synth stack - up to three T3s can be used for polyphonic voices.  One T3 voice is big enough on its own, but a polyphonic T3 must be deadly - wonder if the elves at Moog ever tried that one?!?  One of my favorite features is using the Voyager control panel as a remote editor, because I can play the T3 from the Voyager's keyboard and I don't have to crouch down to the floor to tweak the T3 panel.  I have long lamented the lack of a decent MIDI interface for the Taurus I, and with MIDI being a standard feature in the Taurus III it becomes a 21st century Taurus.  Bravo!

Because the T3 is a V/hz system, calibration is occasionally needed.  This is a fifteen minute task done by the processor and it calibrates the tuning of notes zero through 60 - the full range of the oscillators.  The T3 is calibrated before it leaves the factory, but if you perform a firmware upgrade you may need to re-calibrate.  This is NOT intended to be an autotune function like vintage polyphonic synthesizers.  And THANK YOU for NOT using a wall-wart power supply!

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The Moment of Truth - does the T3 deliver?

We discovered that the Taurus I that Moog was using was not 100% functional so some design errors had to be corrected.  They simply did not know until my set came along.  The staff agreed that my Taurus I unit sounded better than the in-house battered unit so my set became the golden standard.  Fortunately they had followed my discussion on the forum and arranged to have subwoofers installed in the Moog Lab which will really show off the famous Taurus oomphTM.

I have pretty analytical ears (despite my hearing impairment from birth) and have a lot of experience tweaking analog synthesizers, traits that the Moog staff sought to expoit.  I had recommended that we use subwoofers because that is where the original T1 breathes fire.  I have a 2000 watt stereo PA system at home from my gigging days that has subwoofers containing an EV 18" speaker - two on each side four total.  I had also brought along my Moog Source which had been my bass synth for years before I got my Taurus I pedals.  With subwoofers I knew to listen for those subsonics that the original T1 put out.  The subwoofers were definitely an asset as they served to illustrate to the staff how my Source - and the Voyager and Phatty in the lab - lacked the solid low end of the Taurus.  Many customers play their products on speakers that are not capable of producing the low end that subwoofers can produce, so the Taurus low end would not translate to those compromised speakers.  Maximum effect is realized with a speaker system with subwoofers, especially a hall-quality PA system.  Indeed, when Moog announced the Taurus III at the next NAMM show (less than a month away), they made sure to cart along the subwoofers for maximum effect.  If you watch aforementioned video on YouTube you can see the subwoofer speaker begging for mercy.

As a tribute to Bob, Moog Music later released a cute YouTube video of "Happy Birthday" being played on a Taurus III, with birthday candles being lit in front the subwoofer speakers.  Then when "Happy Birthday" was completed, a low note was played on the Taurus III and the resulting air current from the subwoofer speaker blew out the candles.  Nice marketing gimmick!

So we normalized all three units and started the comparision, a moment I had been waiting for.  Despite the minor design errors, the bulk of the sound was already there.  I was listening for the filter, for the slope of the envelopes, for that 20hz corner boost, for the subtle overdrive of the VCF and VCA - everything.  Especially important was that low end oomphTM.  It is not enough to hear it - you have to feel it.  It has to radiate throughout the room and the supporting frames of the structure.  You have to feel it in your bones.  It has to rattle the plates in the cupboard.  It has to make the pictures on the wall go crooked.  It has to work loose dust from the ceiling.  It has to free constipated bowels (sorry).  Sure enough, several people on the assembly floor could hear and feel our work despite the Moog Lab being located in a separate non-adjacent room a hundred feet away in an old textile mill building with a stiff structure.  And we were not playing that loud!

Day one confirmed that the subsonics of the T1 were present in the T3 and that famous Taurus preset roar could definitely be replicated faithfuly.  A lot of folks at the factory asked my assessment.  I gave it two thumbs up, and I told them I do not make that claim lightly as I am as critical as they come and had never been able to duplicate the original Taurus 100%  - until the T3.  The T3 delivers the goods of the T1.  Critical replication of the original Taurus presets - Bass, Tuba, and Taurus - would be done the following day at a professional recording studio.

I was also interested in what the T3 could achieve beyond the T1.  I really liked the resonant color of the filter and Cyril said he put a lot of effort to get it to sound good.  The resonance color resembled the filter in my Moog Source, which I also brought along with me for sound design.  When they invited me to develop some patches for the Taurus III library, I replicated some Source bass patches (which had the now-discontinued Encore Electronics MIDI retrofit that expanded patch storage from 16 to 256) that had served me well for years.  When I tried some lead synth sounds, I got a nice creamy resonance and high end sheen that had been missing from the modern Moog synths like Voyager and Phatty.  That sound was a lot like the old 904A lowpass VCF module from the original modular from the 1960s.  In email exhanges with Bob when he was still around, he confirmed that the Taurus filter was originally lifted from the 904A module.  The patches that made it into the library were Paranoid Pedal, Angry Bass, Oomga Mooga, Abyss Bass, HighRezzLead, OctavePedalBass, and Pow Bass.  I wish I knew who contributed the other patches in the library, there are some pretty good ones in there. top

The Critical Listening Sessions at Echo Mountain Studio

Day two was spent at the beautiful Echo Mountain Studio in downtown Asheville for critical replication of the original Taurus I presets that Taurus enthusiasts were expecting to hear.  The studio was a great asset as they had excellent monitors where you could really hear the fine details in the timbre.  The control room was acoustically optimized to minimize resonances and maintain flat frequency response - indeed, as I walked around the room I could not hear any resonant node or phase cancellations.  I made sure that the power amplifier and studio speakers could handle the low end of the Tauri (plural?) without clipping or "farting out".

I strategically placed myself at dead center of the studio, flanked on each side with the new T3 and my "golden standard" T1 pedals.  Amos played the T1 while Steve played and tweaked the T3, and I helped get the tweaking to the finish line.  We were determined to get the T3 right.  Envelopes, filter resonance, filter cutoff, EG mod amount to filter, oscillator mix levels - everything.  After a few hours of heavy A/B testing, we had the original presets NAILED.

One question raised was how to set the filter wheel on the Taurus preset.  I told Cyril that from every picture I had seen of Taurus pedals with recording groups - Genesis, Rush, etc - the filter footslider was all the way up.  So that was the reference we used to establish the Taurus preset.

The remainder of the afternoon in the studio was spent playing with the new toy.  One by one, other staff from Moog Music stopped down to witness the event.  Mike Adams joined us, and even the Echo Mountain staff played with the T3.  Everybody was excited by the sound.  Mike Adams requested a run through with the now completed product with demos by Amos Gaynes, Steve Dunnington, and yours truly who was titled "taurus aficionado" by the staff.  They were gracious enough to mention my efforts in the T3 user manual, which was a pleasant surprise!

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"Why doesn't the T3 sound like my T1?"

Whenever there is a reissue of a vintage product, there is always someone who claims it doesn't sound like the unit(s) they used to own.

The question is - how do you define the correct reference?  Did you have your T1 calibrated on a regular basis?  If the calibration is not correct, then the sound of the "Taurus" preset will vary from unit to unit.  Analog synthesizers will drift out of spec and the T1 is no exception, especially when the last T1 off the production line was built in 1980.  Besides drift, there is the issue of trimpots going bad (the degradation will be so gradual that you don't even notice it) and that will affect calibration.  If your ears were accustomed to your uncalibrated T1, you were probably hearing a unit whose filter cutoff drifted out of spec.   If you hear a brand new factory calibrated T3 under this condition, then of course they will sound different - your reference was tainted because of calibration differences.
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"Why does the T3 have a limited upper pitch?"

Many T3 and Minitaur owners complain about the limited pitch range - the maximum upper pitch is not very high.  Why is this?

Well, that's the thorn of the "faithful reproduction"... V/hz oscillators.  The upper limit is an inherent limitation of the v/hz system and opamp technology.  Let us assume a V/hz system with maximum power rail of 12VDC at which the maximum oscillator pitch is at a control voltage of 10VDC.  In a V/hz system, every descending octave halves the control voltage.  Each descending octave goes 10V, 5V, 2.5V, 1.25V, 0.625V, 0.3125V, 0.15625V... As you get in those really low ranges, you are creeping into the inevitable error domain of opamps - offset and bias errors.  These errors are necessary evils of opamps and cannot be avoided.  Therefore the lower you go in pitch, the larger the error voltage and the larger the pitch error.  Not only will this be flat or sharp, but it will also drift because the error domain is also temperature sensitive and cannot be compensated with software or hardware!  The human ear is very sensitive to pitch errors, and even a millivolt error in those low ranges will be heard and very obvious.  So to minimize pitch errors due to opamp offsets, the pitch range of v/hz oscillators is intentionally limited.

Contrast this with the more common V/oct where descending octaves are by a FIXED control voltage interval, IE 1V change is a one octave change: 10V, 9V, 8V, 7V, 6V, 5V, 4V, 3V.  There's a seven octave range right there and a healthy safety margin from the opamp error domain.

Synthesizer engineers have known these things since the 1960s.  Why did Moog use the V/hz system for the Moog Taurus?  One, this was an instrument envisaged for bass duties and not a lead synthesizer thus the extended range was not necessary.  Two, the V/hz system uses fewer parts.  Three, modulation is more difficult in a V/hz system and back when the original bass pedals were on the drawing table they saw little sense in including pitch and mod wheels.  Obviously the Taurus 3 does include an LFO which can produce modulation so our clever elves at Moog Music have solved the pitch/mod wheel problem.  top

"I'll have what he's having"

Moog Music set up a website so that new Taurus customers could register their serial numbers, post pictures and videos of their new toys, learn about new firmware upgrades, and have various discussions on the web forum.  One of the topics was "What happened when I powered up my T3 for the first time".  I had just taken delivery of my new T3 a few days prior so I posted this gem:
Mr UPS brought this 93lb package into my place and then mysteriously dashed out in a hurry. While I was admiring my new arrival, it suddenly made a movement. Followed by this sound of scraping hoofs and heavy indrawn breathing. I struggled with the box knife to free the beast that was encased within, which wasn't easy as the sudden lunges of movement became more frequent and more aggressive.  If it hadn't been shipped in the flight case I would've had a bull's hoof break through the corrogated paper shell of the box right in my face.

Once the flight case was free of the shipping box, it started dancing across the floor like a mexican jumping bean. Both my cats fled for cover leaving me to confront the possessed pedals alone (thanks guys!). It took all my weight to subdue the case to the floor while I unlatched the lid of the case. Lifted up the lid, and the first thing that greeted me were those lowbrow red eyes glowing in the dark. I quickly closed the lid and recited the Lord's Prayer which granted me newfound confidence. Slowly I raised the lid again. Its nose peeked out, taking in the scents of its new home.

Then the beast lept from its foam-lined cage, unleasing all its wound up energy from being imprisoned for a week. It briefly went into each room as it was looking for something. Then it found the basement where my studio was, and I thought a stampede was coming through from the sound of those happy hoofs rushing down the stairs. The smell of a two thousand watt stereo PA with twin subwoofers each loaded with 18 inch speakers transformed the beast into a excitable puppy who had found its new home.

But this puppy needed taming. After digging out my Feeding and Caring Of Taurus Pedals book from my library, my attempts to tame the bull were naught. Then it occurred to me: I'm trying to home-train a 21st century beast with an obsolete training manual. OK, uh, why don't we just run you through the PA and get all this pent up energy out of your system? To my bewilderment, this happy hoofed puppy submitted to its new owner and sat still enough for me to apply power and some audio cables. I brought its long lost descendent - my Taurus Is - right next to the new kid on the ranch and there appeared to be a brief exchange of reminiscing. OK, they know each other and the beast has someone familiar to be with. Maybe going to the Moog factory to get these two acquainted was a good idea.

I got both pedals hooked up and normalized them on the mixer then I turned on the PA power amps. This was the moment of truth. But the beast was jumping impatiently in place. It wanted to run its paces! I donned my hardhat, my flightsuit, packed my parachute and braced for impact as I gingerly pressed a pedal expecting the worst. I rent a house in wide open country with no neighbors to come knocking on my door so no worries about excessive volume. My first mistake was playing the first note with the "TAURUS III" preset. The subwoofers begged for mercy as they had never endured such subsonics. And my limiters were pegged (thank God for protection limiters!).

I think it is a fair assessment that Moog has made the understatement of the year when they boasted of recreating the bull of the original Taurus. This isn't a reissue, it's a bass monster on steroids! I found the Taurus, Tuba, and Bass presets and commanded the granddaddy Taurus I to speak. The subwoofers in my PA were grimacing at the thought of dual Taurus pedals. Amazingly enough, the T3 had the brawn and aggressiveness of its relative. More importantly, the T3 had that famous "OOMPH" that has been known to moooove chairs (sorry), rearrange china on their shelves, free constipated bowels (damn that chocolate ex-lax cake!), and trigger landslides.

Then there was a knock on my door. The game warden at my doorstep warned me that there was a wild bull loose in the country. They were hot on the trail as they had found a recent avalanche. Crap, the T3 had triggered an avalanche. If I don't tame it soon our county wil be the next San Andreas fault. In feigned concern I asked the warden if there were any missing persons following the avalanche. I was relieved of no report of missing persons but the neighbor down the road was being treated after an entire snowfall from a large pine tree has been mysteriously shaken off and had nearly buried the hapless person. With that I told the warden to extend best wishes and closed the door.

When I arrived back downstairs, the bull was snickering under hushed breath. OK little fella you got a mischievous streak about you. This explains why you were so anxious to run your paces. I've handled feisty creatures like you and I promise you that there won't be a next time. I know how to discipline an animal without striking it and trust me you will submit to the master of this studio and stage in no time. If you have any doubts about my command of the beasts of the analog jungle, feel free to converse with the rest of the studio toys here by the way one of them also has a playful mischievous streak so I'm sure you two will have lots of fun together. Horseplay is tolerated as long as nothing is broken, no harm to the human or beastly race is done, and most of all no repeat no catfights in my lap. Do we have an understanding?

The bull's breathing intensified, then slowed. It realized that although it had to tame its wild side, It had found a good home and was expected to earn its rent. With that, it relaxed its posture and permitted me to run through the rest of its patch library. This time the PA was turned down to a richter scale of 2. We both learned a lesson today.


Needless to say, that post got some reactions :)  Did I have too much wine?  Nah.  It was late at night and I was in one of those punchy moods.  I would've like to have been a fly on the wall to see the reaction of the Moog staff when they read that :)

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Moog Music planned only a limited run of the Taurus III - 1,000 units.  They proved popular enough that they made at least another 500 units.  Two derivative products grew out of the Taurus III: the Minitaur is a tabletop bass synth module with the sound engine of the T3 and a full set of knobs, and the Sub Phatty is a similar product with 25 note keyboard.  Both have been popular.  I haven't done a proper A/B to assess the sound against the Taurus, but I did try the Minitaur in a store and liked it.  Given Moog Music's initial reluctance it is gratifying to see how widely accepted these products were.  It's a nice feeling to be part of a winning team.

Oh I wasn't supposed to say this under NDA, but that metal bar is actually for wiping the mud off your shoes :)

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