Moog Grandmother

[TRiP]

Pretty tasty design

https://www.moogmusic.com/news/introducing-grandmother

 

[YangYing]

sounds cool but not $899 cool

[Mr.Sensi]

Sounds and looks dope.

[TRiP]

tis' a shame about the price indeed...if money wasn't an option i'd swipe up the whole Mother range and just lock myself away

 

they've really stepped up their marketing game, making them seem as if they are the only synths you'd need if you were stranded on a desert island or what have you

 

just even looking at this from 8 years back - swapping out the dark rooms for pretty windows and flowers on desks

 

[TubularCorporation]

Realistic MG-1 form factor!

 

 

 

 

I know it's based on the Rogue not the MG-1 but the MG-1 is cooler.

 

 

 

EDIT: if you can route external audio through the spring reverb tank that makes the price more compelling, considering that even a Danelectro Spring King is over $100.

[Squee]

Uuuuuuuuuuh!

[thawkins]

what a weird name for a synth

 

[TubularCorporation]

[koolkeyZ865]

[Stock]

what a weird name for a synth

Yeah when I first saw it on fb I thought it was a private joke from the "synth memes" group lol

[Braintree]

Realistic MG-1 form factor!

 

 

 

 

I know it's based on the Rogue not the MG-1 but the MG-1 is cooler.

 

 

 

EDIT: if you can route external audio through the spring reverb tank that makes the price more compelling, considering that even a Danelectro Spring King is over $100.

 

 

I really like the MG-1 and would probably just get one of those opposed to the Grandmother.

[TubularCorporation]

 

Realistic MG-1 form factor!

 

 

 

 

I know it's based on the Rogue not the MG-1 but the MG-1 is cooler.

 

 

 

EDIT: if you can route external audio through the spring reverb tank that makes the price more compelling, considering that even a Danelectro Spring King is over $100.

 

 

I really like the MG-1 and would probably just get one of those opposed to the Grandmother.

 

 

 

I had one for years and years (got it for $25 in 2004 or -5 but had to replace all of the controls, which had been smashed, so it ended up being more like $125 total), ended up trading it to a friend for a Roland RS-09 which was a good deal for both of us, since I was in to the MG-1 for about 1/3 the value of an RS09, but the RS-09 is worth about 2/3 what an MG-1 goes for.  He ended up trading it in for a Mother 32, and then I ended up buying the Mother 32 from him for about half the street price.  Over all I prefer the Mother 32 to the MG-1 and I don't really miss it - the Mother32 is about as much Moog sound as I personally need, and the RS-09 covers all of the territory of the MG-1's "polyphony" section - but the one thing about it I really miss is the oscillator sync.  For some reason, the sync on the MG-1 sounded better to me than any other synth with sync that I've gotten to try, including some fancier Moogs.  Bell Tone was cool, too. But I'd rather have the RS-09 any day, a string synth has a lot more character these days than yet another Moog variant (plus it has the external audio input for running stuff through the chorus and lowpass filter, which is endlessly useful).

 

But yeah, if I had $800 or whatever to spend and had to get a Moog monosynth with it, I'd rather get an MG-1 and the parts to mod it heavily than get one of these.  At bare minimum, you really need to tweak the resistor values in the keyboard to get the response better to really get the most out of it, it was pretty sluggish with the stock values, and felt like playing a VST on an underpowered computer.

[TheBro]

Love the design but as others have said the price is pretty steep!!

[TubularCorporation]

On the other hand, if you adjust for inflation an MG-1 would have been the equivalent of $1300 MSRP back in 1982 and that was by far the cheapest Moog you could get, so in light of that the price of this thing (and modern synths in general, even the expensive ones) is pretty impressively low.  This stuff was so undervalued in the 90s and most of the 2000s that it's easy to forget even the inflated prices of most used vintage synths today are actually pretty much in line with their new prices. $1500-$1800 for a well maintained Juno 60 seems a lot less absurd when you remember its MSRP was the equivalent of over $4300.00 in 2018.

 

 

The last 5 or 6 years is the first time in history that new analog synthesizers have been even vaguely affordable for normal people.

[thawkins]

Besides the synth itself, something that caught my attention in that video is that Moog is an employee owned company. I looked up what this means, and it seems basically that 49% of the company is owned by employees through a trust. I am not so up to date with financial schemes, but I take it to mean that whenever you buy Moog stuff, it's probably made by people who give more than two shits about their work and the product, and all the cash isn't just going in some CEO's pocket. Personally I am not in the market for any analog synths at the moment, but knowing the details about this makes me feel a lot better about paying a premium for their stuff.

[Squee]

The price isn't that bad. It's only a tiny bit more expensive than the Sub Phatty which is a pretty straightforward synth

[TubularCorporation]

Besides the synth itself, something that caught my attention in that video is that Moog is an employee owned company. I looked up what this means, and it seems basically that 49% of the company is owned by employees through a trust. I am not so up to date with financial schemes, but I take it to mean that whenever you buy Moog stuff, it's probably made by people who give more than two shits about their work and the product, and all the cash isn't just going in some CEO's pocket. Personally I am not in the market for any analog synths at the moment, but knowing the details about this makes me feel a lot better about paying a premium for their stuff.

 

Yeah, that's also a very good thing and something that makes me feel weird about the various Korgs and Rolands and Behringers and everything (although for me personally it's not a big issue since I've never actually bought anything from any of the major manufacturers new, so theyhaven't seen a dime of my money - actually I did buy a Presonus headphone amp new once in a pinch because I needed something THAT DAY, and I bought a DR-660, two Tascam portastudios, a Dunlop wah, a DOD volume pedal and one Digitech multi-effects unit new back in the 90s... and that's about it as far as buying gear new from major manufacturers goes for me, not for political reasons or anything jsut because I can't afford to get stuf new, but it also feels good knowing I'm not throwing my money at places like that, especially after knowing a bunch of people who worked at Akai/Alesis/Numark/Ion/etc. over the years and have all sorts of horror stories about rampant sexual harassment and other unpleasantness in the upper levels of those companies).

[TRiP]

Besides the synth itself, something that caught my attention in that video is that Moog is an employee owned company. I looked up what this means, and it seems basically that 49% of the company is owned by employees through a trust. I am not so up to date with financial schemes, but I take it to mean that whenever you buy Moog stuff, it's probably made by people who give more than two shits about their work and the product, and all the cash isn't just going in some CEO's pocket. Personally I am not in the market for any analog synths at the moment, but knowing the details about this makes me feel a lot better about paying a premium for their stuff.

 

 

Only joking

 

Tis' a fair point...if I had a real job and could afford nice treats for myself, this would definatley be on the list

[Leon Sumbitches]

Haven't listened to any clips yet but purely from an aesthetic standpoint this rude boy is gorgeous, imo

[TubularCorporation]

Haven't listened to any clips yet but purely from an aesthetic standpoint this rude boy is gorgeous, imo

 

 

It looks like an MG-1, a vintage Acoustic amp and a pile of late 70s MXR guitar pedals having an orgy.

 

 

Which is 100% compliment.

[Stock]

The more I see/hear demos of this thing the more I want one. Problem is, the only "real" synth I own is also a monophonic semi-modular synth (MS20 mini) but I'm considering selling it to get the Grand Mother, I don't know

[acid1]

I really wish this came with actual moog eurorack modules, and you could swap them in or out with other eurorack.

 

Also seems like I'd really only reach for this thing if I wanted insta space music.

 

It sounds really good.

 

The look..... hurts my head.

[omnii]

The second i saw the design i thought "This looks like something that Grandaddy would use" before i even noticed the word "Grandmother". It is a very appealing synth aesthetically and the reverb tank would be lovely but i have a Sub37 and can't justify both at this point in my life.

[hma]

[J3FF3R00]

I just picked up a GM from guitar center’s used site this week. I had some store credit so I ended up paying about $400 less than I would have if it were new. 

So far, I’m loving it. It’s the first monophonic synth I’ve owned. At first I wasn’t sure if I could commit to a monophonic keyboard, but it sounds so fucking dope that it really makes up for that limitation. Especially the low end and the reverb. 

It’s also the only semi-modular synth I’ve ever had. It’s pretty exciting to think about adding more to it’s possibilities down the line. 

I’ve already plugged my guitar into it and that’s pretty rad. I’m pretty happy with it, overall. 

The only gripes I have are the following:

- I was hoping that, even though the synth itself is monophonic, that it would be able to generate a polyphonic signal via usb as a Logic controller. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. Bummer. 

- Luckily I love distorted/nasty bass... which this thing is particularly good for. However, it’s actually pretty difficult to keep tones clean and free of distortion. If I get a clean tone, sometimes certain bass frequencies will distort the clean tone. It’s really hard to tweak that out. It almost makes me wonder if it might be a defect in my unit, but my guess is that it isn’t. 

- a similar thing applies to the reverb tank. I really LOVE the fact this has internal spring reverb but when you have a cleaner tone and slowly turn up the reverb, it’s a bit like an abrupt hiss as soon as you come off zero (mostly noticeable on headphones). 

- there are a few things that happen that seem completely random that take me by surprise here and there (like octaves switching on their own or settings sounding different after turning off the arpeggiator... etc) but I’m chalking it up to analog signal stuff and my relative inexperience with analog monosyths. 

- whoever the nubnut was that packaged it up to ship it to me didn’t unplug 3 patch cables and those all got bent to shit in transit. I told the manager at the store about it and they refunded the shipping cost to me. I’m just hoping none of the internal stuff got damaged. Those ports are cosmetically fine but I still need to test them out to be sure. 

Anyway, I’m enjoying it!

Anyone else have one?