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Minimoog Model D

DURHAM, Due north CAROLINA — Moog Music announced it's reintroducing the classic Minimoog Model D synthesizer with a pilot production run at Moogfest 2022. The Model D first striking the market in 1970, and was used on endless recordings and live tours throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. After a hiatus of over 30 years, Moog Music employees are handcrafting new examples in a pilot product run at the Moog Pop-Up Manufacturing plant here at Moogfest. The company volition sell the units made here in Guitar Center'south Moog Store.

We had the chance to, if non exactly sit downward, instead stand up up and walk effectually the Pop-Up Mill with Moog Music guru Jim DeBardi. The Pop-Upward Factory is a "way of bringing everything we have in Asheville in our Moog synthesizer factory to the festival to Durham for people to experience that," DeBardi said.

Minimoog Moogfest Pop-Up Factory

The Moog Popular-Up Mill at Moogfest 2022. Credit: Jamie Lendino

We started off with the Moog Modular 1c Synthesizer, and specifically, an example that was purchased new by nearby Knuckles University in 1968 and lost in storage for several decades. "Prior to this instrument, in that location wasn't a way for musicians to work with electronic audio," DeBardi said. Synthesizer enthusiasts know the Moog Modular was the first commercially bachelor synthesizer in 1967; Wendy Carlos used 1 to produce her seminal electronic piece of work Switched-On Bachin 1968.

The Minimoog Model D, in plow, was an attempt to bring that sound into a reasonably portable, three-oscillator package that anyone could bring on stage or tape in a studio with. The original had no patch memory or MIDI capability, neither of which had been invented all the same; the new one has both. There'south no word on toll however, just we'd look at least $iii,000, given the price of the company'southward current lineup of hardware synths.

Moog Modular Moogfest 1c Synthesizer

The Moog Modular 1c Synthesizer. Credit: Jamie Lendino

The Model D reintroduction comes less than a yr afterwards Moog Music ended the decade-long production run of the loftier-stop Minimoog Voyager, a reimagined digital version of the classic monosynth. Prior to today's declaration, Moog Music has been selling the Minimoog Voyager Sometime School, a $2,695 Voyager digital synth, but without the display and digital controls. That's yet not the "existent thing," though, if you want a pure analog synth. The Model D also comes hot on the heels of its new Model fifteen iOS app, a $xxx recreation of the company'south classic, incredible Model xv modular synthesizer. If you've got the money for the real one, it's handcrafted down to individually soldered wires–no printed excursion boards in this matter.

Moog Music is based in Asheville, Due north Carolina, as mentioned higher up. Moogfest is taking place in Durham, a few hours away from Asheville, for the first time. Here'south the full 12-minute video of our conversation (and nosotros apologize for the sound quality; information technology's a bit hot throughout in part considering of the insane amount of background noise):

Top paradigm credit: Jamie Lendino