Fresh from the legendary music-machine makers Moog comes 7 digital recreations of their classic wood-panelled Moogerfooger pedals called the Moogerfooger S-series.
For the last few decades plugins have had a real hard time keeping up with their analog counterparts. You’d flip in a plug and know that it didn’t quite what it was meant to be emulating (it’s hard not to get libellous here, I’m sure you can dig into your mind and recall some terrible emulations). It’d maybe crack 80% of the sound of the OG if you were lucky, but hey, it was 2005 and this digital crapbox was speeding up the mix process so perhaps you could live with it and nobody would notice.
Deep in the futuristic 2022 things have changed a little; digital emulations are often getting pretty damn close to their analog counterparts, and Moog has flipped out great-sounding digital versions of their classic discontinued full-size pedals — called the Moogerfooger S-series — all boxes which now demand decent dollars on the used market. Yep, as of today, you can easily purchase plugin versions of the Lowpass Filter, Ring Modulator, 12 Stage Phaser, Analog Delay, MuRF (Multiple Resonant Filter Array), FreqBox, and ClusterFlux.
The Moog name has always been synonymous with creative music-making. The company was started by theremin builder/salesman Bob Moog who shifted over to constructing behemoth synthesisers before winding up manufacturing the Minimoog Model D, a more cost-effective, transportable piece that meshed well with the cosmic turn that the music of 1970 just happened to be taking.
So here we are – Moog has again gone digital. Everyone likes Moog; in a control voltage synth argument even Buchla fans on the heaviest trip still recognise the merits of Moog. And hell, who, besides the biggest fascists, hates a company that essentially gifted itself to its workers in 2015?
And what do we have here? The Moogerfooger line was originally based on filters from the original modular Moog synthesisers which were known for their spectacular build quality and sounds, and none of these pedals skimp out.
Here’s a brief rundown of what all the plugins in the Moogerfooger S-series do*:
MF-101S – The Lowpass Filter with envelope controls, filter cutoff and resonance
MF-102S – A selectable wave Ring Modulator with LFO and modulator frequency section
MF-103S – The 12 Stage Phaser with LFO, phaser sweep, stage select and resonance
MF-104S – A bucket brigade Analog Delay with time, feedback, 6 LFO shapes, rate and amount. After this is where the units discard any traditionality and get exceptionally cool.
MF-105S – Maybe the wildest of them all, and that’s saying something – the MuRF is a series of 8 resonant filters with 11 selectable patterns, rate and envelope control.
MF-107S – Up there with the 105S, the FreqBox is the sound of your input signal manipulating a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), with frequency and waveform adjustment, envelope and FM (frequency modulation) control
MF-108S – The Clusterflux is a bucket brigade delay, that also flanges, choruses and creates chaos with it’s multiple LFO shape selections.
All units feature a Drive control and everything with a Rate control also features a Sync switch. Additionally, there’s multiple features hidden in the settings menu if you truly want to get even deeper with your sound manipulations. Much like the original pedals, the units can easily be used to trigger the computer programming equivalent of control voltages to each other to link and sync ‘em up makes for wild synchronised times with these things.
I’ve had the pleasure of using the tactile versions of at least three of the emulated units (even doing a video demo on one), and damn, they’re incredibly close. The digital totems even have great control voltage emulation of the originals and can easily be linked via drop down menu. It’s just like owning the expensive walnut-sided pedals except these all run in stereo, don’t require reamping to shoehorn into your project, and you can pull in multiple versions across as many channels as you like.
It’s rare I get completely convinced by plug-ins, but these are great. The interface is as modestly charming as the originals, they’re incredibly simple to use, and like all Moog products they’re tailored perfectly to creative use. Sure, you can do subtle with these things, but I’d rather mash the drum bus through the drive and cutoff of the Lowpass Filter into the Analog Delay and create something gnarly.
Perhaps the drive isn’t quite as extreme as the analog units, but stacking a couple of digital numbers with the drive pushed most definitely cures that urge. Each box also has a whole lot of really usable presets too that’ll probably expand your sound pallet AND your mind while you’re at it.
Moog Music teamed up with musician Ty Segall to create an original song using the 7 new Moogerfooger effects. He created the song inside his Harmonizer Studio, where he has a wonderful world of custom and vintage instruments. Using guitar, bass, electric piano, synthesizer, and a mix of percussion, he created ‘Frog Meets Fly’ showcasing Moog’s new software effects plug-ins. Watch that below.
The 7 Moogerfooger S-Series units are available for a limited-time introductory price of $149 USD (regularly $249). This offer includes all seven Moogerfooger effects, compatible with all major DAWs.
To snap up this offer and more details head over to Moogmusic.com
*You’ll notice there’s no MF-106. This was once an April Fools joke run by the company for their ‘Analog Time Compressor’ and props to them for keeping that number vacant for the sake of an online time travel gag.
