The Little Phatty is the next great thing to emerge from the revitalized Moog Music synthesizer company. It is sort of a notch below the Voyager, but should not really be categorized as such because the Little Phatty is a powerful synth with a layout and design that looks less into the past and more towards the future.

The Little Phatty boasts a 100 percent analog signal path, 100 user editable presets and a 37-note keyboard. It is a monophonic synth with two oscillators (the Voyager has three osc). Waveform selector is continuously variable between waveforms (tri, saw, square, pulse) and there is oscillator-sync. The filter is the classic Moog ladder design. Two ADSR envelope generators are available for the volume and the filter. And finally a nice LFO with six waveshapes, four destinations and rate/depth controls helps to get things moving. The 'Master' section of the keyboard has controls for Tuning, +/-2 Octave Transpose, Glide, Pitch/Mod wheels and some data entry controls. There are no on-board sequencers or effects, however.

The interface couldn't be simpler and despite the minimized number of buttons and knobs, there are no hidden pages or sub-layers of button functions - all controls are still very hands-on and provide excellent visual feedback via two-tone back-lit buttons, dials and pitch bend / mod wheels. Beautiful, hand-built, simple, effective, powerful - classic Moog design. The Little Phatty is designed to offer a 21st century analog Moog synthesizer in a compact portable package and at a price every musician can afford.

The standard edition is the Stage model (pictured top). Moog initially released a special, limited edition run of 1,200 individually numbered Bob Moog Tribute Edition synths. The limited run, Tribute Edition of the Little Phatty (pictured above) has special Moog wood side panels, a Bob Moog signature plate across the front and rear, comes with a CD-ROM featuring highlights of the Bob Moog Memorial Celebration Service and a special Bob Moog poster.

OK so they aren't that cheap. And they aren't very feature-rich compared with some of its competitors. But it is a genuine Moog. Its sound engine was designed by the late and great Bob Moog himself. It's the final synth he built for us. And it simply sounds amazing! It's analog but with such ultra-stability and such a modern and expressive interface, using the Little Phatty is an absolute joy - for experimenting, learning, jamming and having fun - it's one of the best 21st century synths for analog basses, leads, effects, noises and more.

Benny

June 2, 2009 @ 6:12 pm

Tried this out about two years ago, wasn't all that impressed with it's capabilities, then again, I am no mastermind when it comes to programming patches, I was more impressed with the capabilities of the Voyager, but then again that is in a completely different league.

a303romance

May 4, 2009 @ 3:32 pm

I bought my LP about a 1.5 years ago and i am still floored by it in many ways, the filters are so very nice and the features are enough to give you some really nice analog sounds. as people keep saying, it's not a voyager, but that's what you get when you pay $1300 as opposed to $3000 on a synth. and it's still a moog, through and through.

also, don't forget the audio in function--i can get a cheap-but-fun minimoog-ish sound by simply running my Juno 106 through the moog's filters. sweet.

jgirv

April 25, 2009 @ 7:53 pm

...of course it sounds analog, 'cause it is... you just have to know how to play it. Digital components are used for patch storage... filter control and Osc frequency are pure analog control... and using the LFO with its various routings is pure magic... I use it for both extremely smooth sounds as well as full-power filter open blasts... such a musical instrument... AND, you can tweak as you play so easily... really has been well thought out.

soundxplorer

February 19, 2009 @ 12:50 pm

The LP uses OSC, VCF and VCA circuits taken directly from the Voyager. This was confirmed by a Moog engineer on the AH mailing list. It's so funny when people say the LP sounds digital. They must be only switching through the presets. I've owned plenty of vintage analogs and the LP can hold its own. The LP doesn't quite have as much depth as the Voyager, modulation-wise, but it is a little deeper than the front panel indicates, plus the included Overdrive circuit sounds great! One cool feature hidden in the menus: you can set the filter response to be either 1, 2, 3 or 4-pole. And it DOES have an arpeggiator (the Stage II, and older models with a free OS update).

ctrlshft

January 10, 2009 @ 1:45 pm

Sound is legendary analog, fat as hell, suprisingly versatile, KB Action is fantastic. Wish it had CV outs, but the INs are plenty and you can use MIDI CCs to automate stuff so w/e. Every step of the way this thing feels like luxury. Great for live, invaluable in the studio. Agree that moog needs multimode filtering, but I got over that and bought a Future Retro XS, and am as happy as a clam. Add a MF-107 and you pretty much have a voyager++! :)

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