Moog Music have been busy. Yes, they’re making an iPhone app, but for hardware lovers, there’s also the Slim Phatty, a rack-sized rendition of the Little Phatty announced last week. US$849 list, fourth quarter of this year; Synthtopia reports an $800 street.
What does the Slim Phatty get you? Like the Little Phatty, it’s basically a 2-oscillator analog monosynth with lots of onboard controls and connectivity.
- 2-oscillator Little Phatty sound engine, with the Moog Ladder Filter and Control Voltage input
- 17″ width, USB, MIDI, CV, external audio processing
- New Tuning Scale feature and editor for alternate scales, microtonal scales, etc.
I like that Tuning Scale feature; I hope to see that on the Little Phatty and not just this Littler Phatty.
The other addition – a bunch of new presets, all available on SoundCloud:
Slim Phatty Sound Samples by moogmusicinc
It’s not a bad deal by any means, though there’s a certainly appeal to the Little Phatty being an integrated instrument with a keyboard you can tote around.
This is about the time where we all do a comparison with, say, Dave Smith Instruments. DSI can get you a mono analog module for as little as US$399, and an entire keyboard for $799, in the Mopho range. Pluses for the DSI: their units are smaller, and you have the option (on the Evolver) of mixing digital and analog oscillators. What DSI doesn’t offer is control voltage input, however.
In other Moog news, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that you can now get the Filtatron on which we reported early last week. US$4.99 on the iTunes store. I could ask profound questions about what this means, but I’ll leave it at this — it’s a nicely-designed tool, a terrific mobile sampler and sound designer when you’re not in your studio, and shows its colors as a real collaboration between software developer (Christopher Wolfe) and the Moog team.