Just Acquired Moog Little Phatty

Mohoyoho · Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 8:02 am Post subject: Just Acquired Moog Little Phatty

Just received the Little Phatty yesterday. What a nice little synth! It features a filter overdrive which can result in some pretty aggressive tones. It's very Moogy sounding, and is designed for live performance. You can tweak it quickly on the fly. The pots are quite interesting; they are analogue but act like digital. The user has three different ways to have the pots react when tweaked. Eventually I will hook it up via CV to my Voyager and see how that goes.

elektro80 · Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 8:03 am Post subject:

Mohoyoho · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 3:05 pm Post subject:

Having fooled around with the Little Phatty for a few days, I thought I would add my first impressions, and compare it to my Voyager: The Voyager can be modulated so much more, and you can create many more unique sounds. It's nice having that 3rd osc. as well. With the Voyager, one can create a patch with a 2 pole filter, then switch to another preset with a 4 pole. With the LP certain options like that are global. It's possible that in future OS upgrades that might change. However, the LP has a great sound and is very easy to tweak on the fly. It's a great live performance synth. It's simplicity is one of its strengths; changes on the fly can be made quickly without digging into submenus. However, adding the CP251 adds way more sonic options and gives you noise as well as S&H which comes with the Voyager. The filter overdrive is quite a powerful tool that the Voyager doesn't have. It really can add some girth and grit to a sound. Another big plus on the Little Phatty is the LFO's ramp wave. Voyager doesn't have that. The pots on the Little Phatty are great to work with. The LP also has a nice feature where you can setup your own sequence of performance presets easily. The LP has the classic Moog sound, and yet it also has it's own sonic palette that's different than the Voyager. Both have a great keyboard, but the LP doesn't have aftertouch. Switching keyboard octaves is a tad more convenient on the LP. The saving of presets is faster on the LP but not as flexible as the Voyager. Voyager's LCD screen has more characters. There are only 100 presets available on the LP whereas the Voyager OS v3 has 700+ more. The LP is much lighter and quick to setup. They both look cool.

cebec · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 3:39 pm Post subject:

I read on the Analogue Heaven list that there's a forthcoming LP update that will add some features that a few reviewers felt were missing...

kkissinger · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 5:43 pm Post subject:

Mark,

Thank you for your insightful comments on the Little Phatty.

-- Kevin

Mohoyoho · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 6:46 pm Post subject:

Thanks.

As far as updates; I feel Moog will make some of those global changes into individual preset changes, such as the filter poles and note priority. There doesn't seem to be a preset buffer like the Voyager so one can browse for a better preset location. I would like to see that offered too. It would be nice if pot mapping becomes a feature as well. Time will tell. For right now, the Little Phatty is a powerful little analogue synth that is a ton of fun to play.

Mohoyoho · Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:03 pm Post subject:

Well, it seems Moog Music has really added some great new features to the Little Phatty via its OS. It indeed now has potmapping, S&H, noise, another modulation bus, and other stuff.
Here's a video from NAMM:
http://www.sonicstate.com/news/shownews.cfm?newsid=4205#

This is a great little synth, the more I play it the more I like it. Can't wait to get the new OS.

ian-s · Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:41 pm Post subject:

Nice video, sounds like a great synthesiser.

The noise source is a modulation source only though right?

Mohoyoho · Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 3:22 pm Post subject:

Not sure. I'll let you know when I get the update.