Moog Minitaur: Noticing yesterday that the word ‘Minitaur’ had been registered by Moog was exciting enough, but as of today the company has unveiled tantalising images and an even more exciting spec sheet for the brand new Moog Minitaur.
While we’d already speculated that we’d be looking at something capable of generating intense, fat and huge bass synth sounds without the need for foot operation, we certainly weren’t expecting something quite to powerful or indeed quite so affordable. This monophonic tabletop bass synthesiser can recreate the mighty, much-coveted tones of the Taurus family, and benefits from a newly implemented one-function-per-knob interface.
A Pedal-free Taurus
You have two oscillators with sawtooth and square shapes, Minimoog-style ADSR envelopes and the much-loved ladder filter, along with CV inputs for pitch, filter, gate and volume, so the Moog Minitaur is capable of pushing out classic bass synth sounds, potentially informed by either the external audio in or the DIN and USB MIDI options. There’s a headphone out for good measure, too.
The tabletop chassis is truly portable, weighing less than 3lbs, so the potential for live gigs is also a very real possibility, especially when combined with the new easy-access interface for go-to sonic manipulation. We think that for less than £500 it’s a unique synth that will sit beautifully in your current rig without costing very much at all, and if you’re currently missing low-end from your analogue arsenal, the Moog Minitaur a no-brainer.
By Paul Lavigne
