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Minimoog Model D

DURHAM, Northward CAROLINA — Moog Music appear it's reintroducing the archetype Minimoog Model D synthesizer with a airplane pilot production run at Moogfest 2016. The Model D start hit the market in 1970, and was used on countless recordings and live tours throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Subsequently a hiatus of over 30 years, Moog Music employees are handcrafting new examples in a pilot production run at the Moog Pop-Up Mill here at Moogfest. The company volition sell the units fabricated hither in Guitar Middle'due south Moog Store.

We had the run a risk to, if non exactly sit down, instead stand up and walk around the Pop-Up Factory with Moog Music guru Jim DeBardi. The Popular-Up Factory is a "way of bringing everything nosotros 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 Factory at Moogfest 2016. Credit: Jamie Lendino

Nosotros started off with the Moog Modular 1c Synthesizer, and specifically, an example that was purchased new by nearby Duke Academy in 1968 and lost in storage for several decades. "Prior to this musical instrument, there wasn't a style for musicians to work with electronic audio," DeBardi said. Synthesizer enthusiasts know the Moog Modular was the get-go commercially available synthesizer in 1967; Wendy Carlos used ane to produce her seminal electronic piece of work Switched-On Bachin 1968.

The Minimoog Model D, in turn, was an attempt to bring that sound into a reasonably portable, three-oscillator package that anyone could bring on stage or record in a studio with. The original had no patch memory or MIDI capability, neither of which had been invented yet; the new one has both. There's no discussion on price still, but we'd expect at to the lowest degree $3,000, given the price of the company'south 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 twelvemonth after Moog Music ended the decade-long production run of the high-stop Minimoog Voyager, a reimagined digital version of the classic monosynth. Prior to today'southward announcement, Moog Music has been selling the Minimoog Voyager Erstwhile School, a $two,695 Voyager digital synth, merely without the display and digital controls. That's nevertheless not the "real thing," though, if you lot want a pure analog synth. The Model D likewise comes hot on the heels of its new Model 15 iOS app, a $30 recreation of the company's classic, incredible Model 15 modular synthesizer. If y'all've got the money for the real 1, it'southward handcrafted downwardly to individually soldered wires–no printed circuit boards in this thing.

Moog Music is based in Asheville, Due north Carolina, equally mentioned above. Moogfest is taking place in Durham, a few hours abroad from Asheville, for the get-go fourth dimension. Hither'south the full 12-minute video of our chat (and we apologize for the sound quality; it's a scrap hot throughout in office because of the insane corporeality of background noise):

Top image credit: Jamie Lendino