Vintage Synth Explorer

Moog • Source

Moog's Source was their first to offer patch memory storage as well as some other new features. It boasted 16 memory locations so you could finally save and recall your synth patches. A casette-tape jack was also implemented to transfer your patches to and from an external tape and free up the on-board memory for additional new patches. But in an effort to modernize with the eighties, the Moog had replaced all buttons, knobs and sliders with flat-panel membrane buttons and a single data-wheel assignment format. At the time, this may have seemed far-out, but in all actuality it is the Source's downfall.

Parameters are edited not with hands-on sliders and knobs but by assigning a selected parameter to the dedicated data wheel. This is very tedious and does not allow for true hands-on tweaking during performances nor can you adjust different parameters simultaneously or while playing. These days, the membrane buttons don't always seem to work quite right either. However, those famous monophonic Moog sounds are still inside this synth which has two fat analog oscillators and the legendary 24 dB Moog filter.

The Source has been used by Tangerine Dream, Jan Hammer, Depeche Mode, Devo, Vince Clarke, New Order, Ultravox, Josh Wink, Front Line Assembly, Moog Cookbook, Kitaro, Imperial Drag, The Cars, Phish, The Rentals, King Crimson, Blur, and Gary Numan.

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the goat

Posted 401 days ago

If you couldn't afford a Mini, this was a great alternative. Like most Moogs, the oscillator tuning was a horror, but very easy to tweak sounds live.
This replaced my Roland SH09 and 101 - you can't beat the posing power, or the programmability - and seriously outdid them for sounds.
Shares the mire sensible data wheel concept with the Roland apha-dial. A lesson there for certain synths that forced you to hold a button and count the digits!

I replaced this with an OSCar, but that was mainly for MIDI.

phil

Posted 451 days ago

One of the nicest sounding twin VCO monosynths there are. Classy punchy bass and much, much more. Makes an SH-101 or something sound like a toy. The downfall of this instrument is that the membrane pad puts people off. It shouldnt, it's extremely easy to edit, you tap the parameter button you want then spin the beautifully weighted data wheel. Easy as that. None of the main parameters are on seperate pages. It's all up there ready to tweak ,on the fly, just like any Moog. The review above is incorrect. You can easily edit sounds whilst playing and in live situations. Hell you only have two hands, one to play, one to tweak. Hit the button, spin the knob. How is that difficult! Also I never heard of or seen a Source with a broken down membrane. I own three sources and they all work perfectly, very reliable. If you are going to buy one it is worth seeking out a late MK2 model as it has a Roland style Din-Sync input to sync up the arpeggiator or sequences to say a TR-808.

Fritz

Posted 460 days ago

The sequencer and arpegiator are very fun to use. You can store two sequences on the memory and then playback and transpose them, the sequences can store patch changes.

JamesJames

Posted 462 days ago

To be fair, the data wheel is weighted, so you can spin it and it will keep going for quite a while. This can be used to create a few pretty funky real-time sounds (when using it on the resonance or hi/lo pass filters, for example). Now, if you want really inconvenient real-time adjustments, the Casio CZ-1 digital synth has a similar "adjust-one-paramater-at-a-time&quo t; design, but instead of a weighted data wheel, all you get is an "up" and a "down" cursor (8-stage envelope programming for amp and filter, but utterly painful to use).

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