Vintage Synth Explorer

Moog • Prodigy

The Prodigy was an entry-level monosynth from Moog, which has since become a very popular and widely used Bass-synth in techno and electronic music. It was designed as an affordable dual-oscillator synth. It was, however, designed without any help from Bob Moog himself. But that didn't stop the Prodigy from becoming an excellent analog synth!

Its simple yet effective design employs two voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs) with saw, triangle and pulse waveforms...all classic analog stuff! There's also a genuine Moog 24dB / octave lowpass filter (emphasis), A/D/S envelope generator, and LFO with square or sine waveforms and routing to the VCF, VCO or both! Even Portamento, Pitch and Mod wheels. To save money there are no highly flexible modulation routings, no on-board sequencers or arpeggiators, and a simple 32 note keyboard.

If you can't afford a Minimoog, look into the Prodigy! It's a simple design with strikingly good sound, and it's perfect for learning analog synthesis with. Love the wood casing! Simple, sweet, Moog. It is used by Überzone, Cirrus, Astral Projection, Fatboy Slim, Depeche Mode, 808 State, Prodigy, Howard Jones, Blur, The New Deal, Solaris, Jimmy Edgar, and the Hippos.

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MartinL

Posted 233 days ago

I try this moog prodigy !
Very simple & moog sound !
I want buy but my friend keep prodigy !
No comment !
Sorry for my bad english ! bye !

Dejan Djordjevic

Posted 326 days ago

Left my old Moog Prodigy synthesiser in its flight case for ages, until summer this year, 2008, when I decided to play all my synth solos on the Prodigy and combining it with all the digital software synths and stuff .. Brilliant! It was like flying, not just pure nostalgia. These two old oscillators still sound great!

Kirk Slinkard

Posted 369 days ago

Great classic Moog sound, fantastic bass & lead instrument. There are lots of customizing instructions in the manual. I modified my oscillator 1 to be the same as oscillator 2 so I could do deep beating square waves like Lucky Man. And these oscillators stayed in tune.

robitron

Posted 374 days ago

I really like my Prodigy. I turn the osc. sync off and roll the pitch bend wheel all the way down. Then, with Osc. 1 set to 16' you have basically two oscillators at 32'! Sync is fine some of the time, but I like being able to tune the two 32' oscillators for a fat bass line.

Another trick is to move the slider for the mod wheel assignment into the middle so that it doesn't contact either side. Then the modulation wheel becomes a super pitch bender.

Prodigy doesn't have a noise generator, but for musical applications, I really don't miss that. MiniMoog has 3 oscillators, but you lose one to serve as LFO. Some people do modifications to add frequency modulation, and other tweaks, and Prodigy is a good basic synth to tinker with. Mine is unmodified, but I've gotten lots of use from it, mainly for bass lines, but for certain voices in that application, I think it is quite capable.

Roboctopus

Posted 402 days ago

Yeah, I saw one go for $2000...totally nuts. It's one of my favorite synths though. It's so easy, and to my ears, it sounds better (richer, warmer) than a little phatty. I wouldn't pay over $700 for one though.

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