My Memorymoog Plus also came into my possession by mysterious circumstances. We were auditioning a new drummer (his name is Norman) for our church worship team. Then Norman's wife noticed we had hit it off quite famously. After practice she approached the stage and said "Hey Norm, we need to give Bill that old keyboard we have out in the shed!" She turned to me and said "You ever heard of a Memorymoog?"...I died a little bit on the inside. Turns out someone who owed Norm a little money gave it to them. But Norm being a drummer, it had literally sat in a storage shed for several years. I had it completely restored by Jareth Lackey who did a fine job and brought it completely back to life with reliable usage ever since. Norm and I are great friends still.... and not just because he gave me a classic monster synth!
@@1Live2Love3ThriveHa! He certainly did. It’s a fantastic poly synth. I remember seeing one in a music store back in 1985. This is only the second one I’d ever seen!
The Moog is super cool and makes amazing sounds, especially for its time, actually it was way ahead of its time. As a collector's item I could see why people want to collect them, in comparison to old cars they are still a great deal cheaper and just as much fun. As mentioned in the video the sound is unique and it still does quite a bit for being almost 40 years old. There is now such a resurgence in polyphonic synthesizers and I believe that more people will get hooked and will grow to appreciate this type of music. In fact there is a lot of polyphonic music in everyone's lives, they just don't realize that it's being performed in movies and commercials, let alone there is a large following with DJs. It also seems like many Europeans are ahead of Americans when it comes to techno music or so it seems. The more I research and explore, I'm amazed at how many people are involved in this resurgence.
the same thing happen to my memorymoog. A guy bought it and saw what it was and he kept it in his closet for years, in 2003 he took it to the music consignment center in california and thats when i got it, still wrapped up in the original box with manual and sysex preset factory patch tape cassette. Instead i had to sell my prophet 5 rev 3.3 back to winecountry sequential to get it, but i bought the memorymoog for $800 bucks.
We Compared a MemoryMoog to a Moog One. There were 10 People in the Room. It was at a Studio. There was No Contest. The Lush, Organic Sonic Beauty of the MemMoog blew the Moog One Away. Not one person disagreed. I wouldn't call it a Scientific Xperiment. It wasn't a double blind listening experience, but everyone was surprised because we didn't expect such a mismatch. The MemMoog is Worth Every Penny IMHO!!! In fact, only 2 or 3 synths on the planet really give it a run for its money as far as Big Lush Pads are concerned. The OBX/8 Voice and the Synthex maybe. (IMHO, No the Matrix 12 and the Jupiter 8 do not sound as good, and the CS80 is kinda its own deal : ) PS: In deference to the gentleman below, if I was going to tour with one of these synths, of course I'd have chosen the Moog One.
The question is: who programmed your One? It took me months to get how to tune even its basic tone. I just don’t understand why Moog delivered it as a “DIY” synth: you have to sculpt your own curves for the envelope segments, same for wave angles and many other parameters. And on top of that 6-7 modulations to get a proper “per voice” dispersion on key parameters. Once you do that on your own “INIT” it becomes awesome. But out of the box, I agree, many things are too straight and thin. But now I’ve had it for 2.5 years I wouldn’t trade it for a MM LAMM, never 🙂
@@NedBouhalassaVideos I love my A6 too… but tbh it has been gathering dust since I got the One 2.5 years ago. The One is the A6 2.0 I dreamt of during the 13 years I used it 🙂
I gigged with a MM alongside a 4 Voice, OBXa and P5. By far the most unreliable thing I ever owned but when it was working there was nothing quite like it in its' day. Are they worth the money they command these days, absolutely not. I'll stick with my Moog One thanks
Oddly my 3 Moog Ones' were the most unreliable things I've come across. After my 3rd faulty unit from Sweetwater I didn't take a fourth. First was DOA, 2nd was lefts channel only, third unit rebooted a dozen times in the first day. And they were so loud from the fans.
I have an account with Sweetwater - They sent me 3. I have a hand written letter from Mike Adams, CEO of Moog, apologizing. I just opened upon of my last videos I made on "ONE" #3 before it failed. I was demonstrating how well it could mimic an ARP Omni by just rattling off a Joy Division song.. If you look at my channel it's there. Of my peer musicians that purchased a ONE when they came out, none of them still have them due to either hardware of firmware bugs. I liked the instrument, sonically, but couldn't tolerate it any longer.
@@music2me23 Just made public a 2nd video I made for Moog back in the day when troubleshooting Moog #2. This one never boot - even after-hours on the phone with Moog Support. This one was sent back for #3, which is in the other video I made public. (for reference, #1 was returned because it had no left channel audio. Post-mortem by Moog, they informed me it was a bad AD/DA board from manufacturing. But Sweetwater had sent me a new one so I never got #1 back.
Girls want to have fun the kalimba solo was on this ,mezzoforte garden party had two, as enveloppe speeds go on Poly's the prophet 5 rev 3 were razor sharp
Girls Just Want to Have Fun is a classic, but the Memorymoog is overkill for that simple 'kalmba' sound! Still an interesting bit of history - thanks for sharing.
"Precipe?" Did you mean "precipice?" Either way, you probably meant to say "pinnacle." I lusted after and finally owned a one of these beasts. It wasn't ready for prime time. My Roland D-50, however, was. That said, I still wish that I'd kept that old beast. Lesson learned.
I don't know if your demos give this synth justice...most of what you played can be made with a Juno-106 or JP-6 or Prophet-5. Maybe you can do one more demo of real complex sounds? I like to hear some evolving LFO patterns and also want to hear some bassline patterns.
It sounds good. Actually a figure of $10k would be a good price in today's dollars. I calculated the original price at about $13-14k if you adjusted for inflation. But, the key question is, what can it do relative to what other synths can do today? Certainly, the average workstation today has way more features than this could dream of. The sounds are pretty good although the best really showing off the Moog filter sweeping through sounds are what give this thing its following. They were not known for reliability back in its day. You are going to pay quite a bit for one, then several thousand more to bring it into playing shape. Unless you are really a collector, I think the software emulators are the way to enjoy these. Would you really risk taking it out of a nice, warm, safe studio? You might be better buying a Moog Matriarch or even two.
@reymhd7655 is an extreme generalization that is not true. The manufacturers did reach for the stars on some models. But they were priced way beyond anything the average user could dream of. Only large studios could afford them and maybe players under huge recording contracts like Keith Emerson. I suggest you check even the price of a MiniMoog adjusted for today's dollars. While many of the design ideas were novel, the reliability of the circuitry itself killed the product. The Memory Moog, Polymoog, Yamaha CS80, and CS40, the Prophet 10, and many more while sounding great were horrible in terms of keeping them functional. There is also no way you can compare the early integrated circuits and microprocessor technology to what we have today. It's not even close in terms of reliability or functionality. Many of these companies went out of business due to a combination of things. While many were great engineers, they were horrible businessmen. The rise of better and cheaper synthesizers coming from the Japanese, which were aimed at a larger consumer base, also killed off most of the American and English efforts. Failure to get off the analog bandwagon at a time when it was clear the microprocessor would be the dominant technology certainly helped in the demise of Arp and even Moog. And your assertions of build quality are ludicrous. Yes, they may have used sturdier pots and switches, heavier chasis, etc. But, they'd use under engineered power supplies that were marginal at best. Many of the early circuit boards were also of very poor standards in terms of the layouts and trace designs. Many manufacturers were still using hand drawn trace layouts at that time. So they'd cut corners in the wrong areas.
@reymhd7655 If you honestly think synthesizer technology has not advanced, I really don't know what planet you live on. Look at the Eurorack market. They have modules the great manufactures of old couldn't have dreamed of. And they dont require a ten year record deal to have access to. My Kronos workstation has 9 synth engines in one box. Did you ever play with the VAST engine of Kurzweil? That is up to 32 patch layers per patch. Are you seriously going to compare 8 bit microprocessors on maybe 4k of memory to the most power dsp chips we have ever known? The technology today blows away what they had to work with. Sorry, but Bob Moog sorting out transistors in a box to get better matches is no comparison to modern DCOs and the phenomenal opamps and DACs we use today. My Oberheim X8 not only sounds every bit as good as the originals but comes with each of the Oberheim early presets in one machine. So, it isn't the technology. What we do lack, however, is music that utilizes all of this technology. At no time in history has there been the abundance of gear we have today available to so many at fairly reasonable prices. Yet, the creativity with this wealth of technology is seemingly poor. With a modesly equipped computer, any DAW, and a handful of plug-ins, the user of today can have sounds that would have been produced on machines costing what a home went for in the 70s and 80s. I have often said the musicians of yesterday were more productive with less. Even despite the massive keyboard rigs they had then. As a typical example for a band like Yes back in the 70s. If we look at the keyboard rig if that day, we'd see an organ, a couple different electric pianos, maybe a Mellotron or two or String synth, a clavinet, a polysynth and maybe one or two mono synths. I can easily create that entire stack on one combination on my workstation. And not break any roadies back in the process.
As legendary as it is I wouldn’t say it’s worth it. Hopefully someone does a clone. The prices for these things are starting to get into cs80 territory.
The One is only sterile if you don’t know how to leverage its tone sculpting capabilities. It is important to consider that on all vintage synths envelope curves are made for you and you can’t edit them. On the One it’s your job to adjust them, and you have tons of possibilities, starting from the INIT linear shapes (the biggest mistake from Moog imho: why did they put those envelopes as default???). Once the envelope shapes are good, you only have to adjust oscillators timbre by adjusting wave angles (impacts the warmth) and, most important, dial some per voice dispersion on key parameters: all envelopes segments, filters + a bit of tuning dispersion. And there you go! The thing is, 90% of the users out there don’t understand that and stick to working it as a vintage machine where all those those things are done per se in the hardware… So yes, they end up with sterile sounds… Their fault, not the One’s :)
I repaired a few of them, even my own. The power supply and all the wiring between boards was a poor design. Oberheim had it right by having a motherboard with all the voice cards. The newer SCI synths do it like that. Other companys just use one or two bigger circuit boards for analog, or one little one for digital.
Seriously , what were those companies thinking when building these humongous and super expensive synthesizers !! I was at a music concert where a band re-created all the 80's sounds and much more with only 2 iPads. If Mr. Moog were alive, he would kill himself if he saw the iPad capabilities.
Nobody I know would rather use an ipad over an actual synth--especially ON STAGE. Also--those ipads only support software for around 6 years. Hardware is eternal.
btw--Those companies built those synths with the tech available. Smartphone and tablet tech did not exist. Also, new analog synths are currently in production, and are selling like hotcakes, so people do actually want these instruments.
My Memorymoog Plus also came into my possession by mysterious circumstances. We were auditioning a new drummer (his name is Norman) for our church worship team. Then Norman's wife noticed we had hit it off quite famously. After practice she approached the stage and said "Hey Norm, we need to give Bill that old keyboard we have out in the shed!" She turned to me and said "You ever heard of a Memorymoog?"...I died a little bit on the inside. Turns out someone who owed Norm a little money gave it to them. But Norm being a drummer, it had literally sat in a storage shed for several years. I had it completely restored by Jareth Lackey who did a fine job and brought it completely back to life with reliable usage ever since. Norm and I are great friends still.... and not just because he gave me a classic monster synth!
Haha you lucky bastard God blessed you!
@@1Live2Love3ThriveHa! He certainly did. It’s a fantastic poly synth. I remember seeing one in a music store back in 1985. This is only the second one I’d ever seen!
The Moog is super cool and makes amazing sounds, especially for its time, actually it was way ahead of its time. As a collector's item I could see why people want to collect them, in comparison to old cars they are still a great deal cheaper and just as much fun. As mentioned in the video the sound is unique and it still does quite a bit for being almost 40 years old. There is now such a resurgence in polyphonic synthesizers and I believe that more people will get hooked and will grow to appreciate this type of music. In fact there is a lot of polyphonic music in everyone's lives, they just don't realize that it's being performed in movies and commercials, let alone there is a large following with DJs. It also seems like many Europeans are ahead of Americans when it comes to techno music or so it seems. The more I research and explore, I'm amazed at how many people are involved in this resurgence.
I’m a European Techno DJ
There are MANY genres that utilize synths. Techno is only one of them.
Moog Music always started their serial numbers at 1000 for their instruments. There were around about 2800 made.
I didn’t know that, according to this I have number 57!
@@danwentz I had 119 stolen from me.
@@Observe-n-Learn Ouch! Sorry about that man. My Moog Voyager 50th Anniversary Edition is 69!
mine is SN 4066 so def more than that were made!
the same thing happen to my memorymoog. A guy bought it and saw what it was and he kept it in his closet for years, in 2003 he took it to the music consignment center in california and thats when i got it, still wrapped up in the original box with manual and sysex preset factory patch tape cassette. Instead i had to sell my prophet 5 rev 3.3 back to winecountry sequential to get it, but i bought the memorymoog for $800 bucks.
Got a pamphlet in the mail when Moog was being liquidated. MM+ were $1250.
I want one, but would not trade in my P5 for it.
Imagine how many of these or other vintage synths are sitting inside someone’s grandparents closet or basement ? Damn :(
We Compared a MemoryMoog to a Moog One. There were 10 People in the Room. It was at a Studio. There was No Contest. The Lush, Organic Sonic Beauty of the MemMoog blew the Moog One Away. Not one person disagreed. I wouldn't call it a Scientific Xperiment. It wasn't a double blind listening experience, but everyone was surprised because we didn't expect such a mismatch. The MemMoog is Worth Every Penny IMHO!!! In fact, only 2 or 3 synths on the planet really give it a run for its money as far as Big Lush Pads are concerned. The OBX/8 Voice and the Synthex maybe. (IMHO, No the Matrix 12 and the Jupiter 8 do not sound as good, and the CS80 is kinda its own deal : ) PS: In deference to the gentleman below, if I was going to tour with one of these synths, of course I'd have chosen the Moog One.
Don’t forget the Andromeda! I have both, fortunately!
The question is: who programmed your One? It took me months to get how to tune even its basic tone. I just don’t understand why Moog delivered it as a “DIY” synth: you have to sculpt your own curves for the envelope segments, same for wave angles and many other parameters. And on top of that 6-7 modulations to get a proper “per voice” dispersion on key parameters. Once you do that on your own “INIT” it becomes awesome. But out of the box, I agree, many things are too straight and thin. But now I’ve had it for 2.5 years I wouldn’t trade it for a MM LAMM, never 🙂
@@NedBouhalassaVideos I love my A6 too… but tbh it has been gathering dust since I got the One 2.5 years ago. The One is the A6 2.0 I dreamt of during the 13 years I used it 🙂
ive not tried a Moog one, but I used to have MM and a jp8a many many years ago and frankly the mm didn't come anywhere close I recall.
The MM blows away the One in raw tone.
I friend is renting one to me for a session,he just collects stuff,i can't wait to try it.
This instrument is technically not worth 10g , but from a collectors point of view I guess its priceless. Great vid.
Thank you!
They go for up to $15,000...Too rich for my blood, but the market dictates the value.
I gigged with a MM alongside a 4 Voice, OBXa and P5. By far the most unreliable thing I ever owned but when it was working there was nothing quite like it in its' day. Are they worth the money they command these days, absolutely not. I'll stick with my Moog One thanks
Oddly my 3 Moog Ones' were the most unreliable things I've come across. After my 3rd faulty unit from Sweetwater I didn't take a fourth. First was DOA, 2nd was lefts channel only, third unit rebooted a dozen times in the first day. And they were so loud from the fans.
@@station2station544 LoL. I doubt you ever owned a Moog One. They are very reliable.
I have an account with Sweetwater - They sent me 3. I have a hand written letter from Mike Adams, CEO of Moog, apologizing. I just opened upon of my last videos I made on "ONE" #3 before it failed. I was demonstrating how well it could mimic an ARP Omni by just rattling off a Joy Division song.. If you look at my channel it's there. Of my peer musicians that purchased a ONE when they came out, none of them still have them due to either hardware of firmware bugs. I liked the instrument, sonically, but couldn't tolerate it any longer.
@@music2me23 Just made public a 2nd video I made for Moog back in the day when troubleshooting Moog #2. This one never boot - even after-hours on the phone with Moog Support. This one was sent back for #3, which is in the other video I made public. (for reference, #1 was returned because it had no left channel audio. Post-mortem by Moog, they informed me it was a bad AD/DA board from manufacturing. But Sweetwater had sent me a new one so I never got #1 back.
@@station2station544 sorry to hear. Mine has been very reliable. I hope it stays that way :)
Girls want to have fun the kalimba solo was on this ,mezzoforte garden party had two, as enveloppe speeds go on Poly's the prophet 5 rev 3 were razor sharp
Awesome! Love that song. Did not know.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun is a classic, but the Memorymoog is overkill for that simple 'kalmba' sound! Still an interesting bit of history - thanks for sharing.
"Precipe?" Did you mean "precipice?" Either way, you probably meant to say "pinnacle."
I lusted after and finally owned a one of these beasts. It wasn't ready for prime time. My Roland D-50, however, was.
That said, I still wish that I'd kept that old beast. Lesson learned.
Precipice works well where he was trying to use the word.
I don't know if your demos give this synth justice...most of what you played can be made with a Juno-106 or JP-6 or Prophet-5. Maybe you can do one more demo of real complex sounds? I like to hear some evolving LFO patterns and also want to hear some bassline patterns.
Those that can do. He obviously can’t. Maybe he can learn? ;)
These go for more than $10,000. "Worth" is solely defined by the market really.
Great🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠
It sounds good. Actually a figure of $10k would be a good price in today's dollars. I calculated the original price at about $13-14k if you adjusted for inflation. But, the key question is, what can it do relative to what other synths can do today? Certainly, the average workstation today has way more features than this could dream of. The sounds are pretty good although the best really showing off the Moog filter sweeping through sounds are what give this thing its following. They were not known for reliability back in its day. You are going to pay quite a bit for one, then several thousand more to bring it into playing shape. Unless you are really a collector, I think the software emulators are the way to enjoy these. Would you really risk taking it out of a nice, warm, safe studio? You might be better buying a Moog Matriarch or even two.
@reymhd7655 is an extreme generalization that is not true. The manufacturers did reach for the stars on some models. But they were priced way beyond anything the average user could dream of. Only large studios could afford them and maybe players under huge recording contracts like Keith Emerson. I suggest you check even the price of a MiniMoog adjusted for today's dollars. While many of the design ideas were novel, the reliability of the circuitry itself killed the product. The Memory Moog, Polymoog, Yamaha CS80, and CS40, the Prophet 10, and many more while sounding great were horrible in terms of keeping them functional.
There is also no way you can compare the early integrated circuits and microprocessor technology to what we have today. It's not even close in terms of reliability or functionality. Many of these companies went out of business due to a combination of things. While many were great engineers, they were horrible businessmen. The rise of better and cheaper synthesizers coming from the Japanese, which were aimed at a larger consumer base, also killed off most of the American and English efforts. Failure to get off the analog bandwagon at a time when it was clear the microprocessor would be the dominant technology certainly helped in the demise of Arp and even Moog. And your assertions of build quality are ludicrous. Yes, they may have used sturdier pots and switches, heavier chasis, etc. But, they'd use under engineered power supplies that were marginal at best. Many of the early circuit boards were also of very poor standards in terms of the layouts and trace designs. Many manufacturers were still using hand drawn trace layouts at that time. So they'd cut corners in the wrong areas.
@reymhd7655 If you honestly think synthesizer technology has not advanced, I really don't know what planet you live on. Look at the Eurorack market. They have modules the great manufactures of old couldn't have dreamed of. And they dont require a ten year record deal to have access to. My Kronos workstation has 9 synth engines in one box. Did you ever play with the VAST engine of Kurzweil? That is up to 32 patch layers per patch. Are you seriously going to compare 8 bit microprocessors on maybe 4k of memory to the most power dsp chips we have ever known? The technology today blows away what they had to work with. Sorry, but Bob Moog sorting out transistors in a box to get better matches is no comparison to modern DCOs and the phenomenal opamps and DACs we use today. My Oberheim X8 not only sounds every bit as good as the originals but comes with each of the Oberheim early presets in one machine. So, it isn't the technology.
What we do lack, however, is music that utilizes all of this technology. At no time in history has there been the abundance of gear we have today available to so many at fairly reasonable prices. Yet, the creativity with this wealth of technology is seemingly poor. With a modesly equipped computer, any DAW, and a handful of plug-ins, the user of today can have sounds that would have been produced on machines costing what a home went for in the 70s and 80s. I have often said the musicians of yesterday were more productive with less. Even despite the massive keyboard rigs they had then. As a typical example for a band like Yes back in the 70s. If we look at the keyboard rig if that day, we'd see an organ, a couple different electric pianos, maybe a Mellotron or two or String synth, a clavinet, a polysynth and maybe one or two mono synths. I can easily create that entire stack on one combination on my workstation. And not break any roadies back in the process.
As legendary as it is I wouldn’t say it’s worth it. Hopefully someone does a clone. The prices for these things are starting to get into cs80 territory.
there's a guy who wants to sell this memorymoog keyboard for $8,000. Should I buy it ?
If you did, hope you sold it for $10k. If not, there are way better options.
would love to hear a comparison with the moog one if you get a chance this sounds really good to me while the one sounds sterile
The One is only sterile if you don’t know how to leverage its tone sculpting capabilities. It is important to consider that on all vintage synths envelope curves are made for you and you can’t edit them. On the One it’s your job to adjust them, and you have tons of possibilities, starting from the INIT linear shapes (the biggest mistake from Moog imho: why did they put those envelopes as default???). Once the envelope shapes are good, you only have to adjust oscillators timbre by adjusting wave angles (impacts the warmth) and, most important, dial some per voice dispersion on key parameters: all envelopes segments, filters + a bit of tuning dispersion. And there you go! The thing is, 90% of the users out there don’t understand that and stick to working it as a vintage machine where all those those things are done per se in the hardware… So yes, they end up with sterile sounds… Their fault, not the One’s :)
The One lacks most of the growl and rough character of the Memorymoog.
Mine is worth it 😎
Same here! Congrats!
God I wish they'd reissue it with the problems ironed out.
I repaired a few of them, even my own. The power supply and all the wiring between boards was a poor design. Oberheim had it right by having a motherboard with all the voice cards. The newer SCI synths do it like that. Other companys just use one or two bigger circuit boards for analog, or one little one for digital.
NO, but some people believe so since they bought it.
…and I’m nooot talkin bout the druuugs
???
Very digital sounding. Just a hint of that classic Moog sound. Kind of weird!
LOL...Nothing digital here, it's the demo that suxx...Go check out FATBACK "Is this the Future?" album from 1983 to hear what the MM can do.
Huh? What? Does your otologist know about your problem?
As a musical instrument, I'd say it's worth as much as an iPad synth. As a collector's item it's, irrelevant.
Seriously , what were those companies thinking when building these humongous and super expensive synthesizers !! I was at a music concert where a band re-created all the 80's sounds and much more with only 2 iPads. If Mr. Moog were alive, he would kill himself if he saw the iPad capabilities.
OK galaxy brain
@@mach489i 🤣🤣🤣🤣jealous because there are smart ways to create music ??? 🤣🤣🤣
Nobody I know would rather use an ipad over an actual synth--especially ON STAGE. Also--those ipads only support software for around 6 years. Hardware is eternal.
btw--Those companies built those synths with the tech available. Smartphone and tablet tech did not exist. Also, new analog synths are currently in production, and are selling like hotcakes, so people do actually want these instruments.
Not humungous and the prices made sense.
VST’s don’t last as long as synths.