
Classic Moog Sound for the Next Generation of Producers
Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins are a re-invention of Moog’s coveted analog effects pedals, bringing the legendary tone, musicality, and interconnectivity of the original hardware effects to your digital music production environment.
Designed by Bob Moog and his engineering team in the late '90s and '00s, Moogerfooger effects pedals were direct descendants of the original Moog modular synthesizers, adapted to process, modulate, and play with inputs ranging from guitar, voice, and synthesizer to any imaginable audio source. From the MF-104's lush, warm analog delay circuit to the swirling phaser effects of the MF-103 and legendary resonant ladder lowpass filter in the MF-101, Moogerfoogers have become renowned for their sound and adopted by studios and performers around the world.
Each of the seven effects (plus a brand newsaturation tool) have been meticulously renewed with reverence for the lush, distinctive tones of the original analog circuits—retaining the exceptional sound quality the pedals are known for, while expanding on what's possible in the hardware realm. With stereo functionality and an extended feature set, these plug-ins further tailor the classic Moogerfooger functionality to the modern digital creator. With all parameters ready to be automated as well as the ability to save and manage presets, Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins mutate and re-shape themselves around your audio tracks.Creative Tools Designed with Interconnectivity in Mind
The original collection of Moogerfoogers were more than the sum of their parts due to their powerful and flexible control voltage inputs and outputs—able to play amongst themselves and combine into dynamic inter-related effects.
Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins recreate that CV interconnectivity, allowing each instance of a Moogerfooger to modulate the parameters of any other across your project in any major DAW. With digital attenuverters added to every CV input, side-chain capabilities, and DC offset capabilities, Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins allow for deep control over every aspect of your sound.Meet the Moogerfoogers: Each Effect Explained
Each member of the Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins family has been designed to embody not only the warm and vibrant sound of Moog’s original analog effects pedals, but also the organic way in which the parameters interact to create a musical playing experience. With CV interconnectivity, stereo functionality, an extended feature set, the ability to run multiple instances, and presets, these effects tailor the classic Moogerfooger functionality to the modern digital creator.
- The MF-101S Lowpass Filter honors Bob Moog’s design of the classic Moog ladder filter. This effect pairs the filter with an envelope follower to impart dynamic motion to the filtered sound.
- The spaced-out, retro-futuristic sound of the MF-102SRing Modulator features a wide-range carrier oscillator paired with an LFO for effects from soft tremolo to far-out clangorous ring modulation tones.
- A descendant of the vibrant 1970s rack-mounted Moog phaser with an on-board LFO, the MF-103S 12-Stage Phaser gives users access to the pedal’s distinct psychedelic enveloping sound.
- Rich and full-bodied, the MF-104S Analog Delay captures the warm, organic texture and character of Moog’s sought-after analog delay circuitry, while adding modern flexibility and ease of use.
- The MF-105S MuRF (Multiple Resonant Filter Array) combines a resonant filter bank with a pattern generator and skewing envelope for vibrant animation of an incoming sound.
- Unconventional, eccentric, freaky: the MF-107S FreqBox lives up to its name with gnarly synced VCO sounds plus envelope and FM modulation.
- For flexible processing, the MF-108S Cluster Flux can do it all. Modulate between chorus, flanging, and vibrato to achieve sounds ranging from subtle swirling to intense flanging.
- The new software-only MF-109S Saturator is a powerful saturation tool based on the classic Moogerfooger input drive stage that adds warmth, distortion, and compression to any sound.
This feature-packed suite of Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins is now available to purchase at moogmusic.com. Click here to get started!
Moog’s Focus on Making Its Instruments More Accessible
The company’s foray into the software space began just over a decade ago with the release of Moog’s first iOS app. Its growing collection of budget-friendly applications for iOS and macOS users has made it possible for more creatives around the world to experiment with sound design and synthesis concepts.
With today’s announcement of the new Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins, available for both Apple and Windows, the team at Moog takes a giant leap forward in its mission to make professional-level audio production tools more accessible—and useful—for the artist community. Steve Dunnington, the company’s current VP of Engineering and former apprentice of Bob Moog, shares more on this evolution and the importance of paying tribute to Moog's heritage.
“Bob liked to describe himself as a toolmaker for musicians,” Steve recalls. “He felt that technology should not drive the needs of musicians, but that engineers and toolmakers should use the needs of musicians to harness the power of technologies to serve those needs. He was never dogmatic about whether analog or digital was better; he saw both technologies as different means to serve the musicians that he respected and admired.”
The Moog veteran of 28 years and counting has worked on the development of dozens of hardware and software instruments, including both the classic analog Moogerfooger and new plug-in emulations.
“As we began the development of the Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins, it was of paramount importance not just to clone the devices, but to look for opportunities where digital technology could improve some of their characteristics. This is in alignment with Bob Moog’s philosophies—he was reluctant to copy his old designs but preferred to continue to refine and improve them based on the needs of musicians. Thus, the envelope follower controls on the MF-101S become more flexible for a wider variety of program material than the original MF-101, thanks to the possibilities provided by digital technology. Other examples abound in the Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins, where inspiration was taken from the original with the addition of useful improvements. They sound great, like the classic Moog circuits we know and love.”
Ty Segall Creates Original Song with Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins, Vintage Minimoog Model D & More
In a new video from Moog Music, Ty Segall invites you inside Harmonizer Studio, home to his wonderland of custom and vintage instruments. Witness the musician and producer’s creative process as he builds an original composition piece by piece using guitar, bass, piano, synthesizer, a mix of percussion, and Moog’s new software effects plug-ins.
In the making of “Frog Meets Fly” Ty demonstrates the sonic range and transformative potential of these effects. Using the MF-107S FreqBox to morph metallic percussion into synth voices and imitate 60s-style fuzz tones on the track’s bass line, adding depth to his Rhodes with multiple instances of the MF-108S Cluster Flux, transforming clean electric guitar into alien lead lines via the MF-102S Ring Modulator, and adding vintage-toned delay to his Minimoog Model D with the MF-104S Delay, Ty puts the processing power of these effects on full display over the 15 separate tracks in this arrangement.
Watch the debut of “Frog Meets Fly” by Ty Segall on Moog’s YouTube channel Here.
Expand Your Effects Collection
In addition to the full collection of all eight effects, these professional sound design and audio production plug-ins are now available individually or in bundles of two or four.
- Individual Purchase (1 Plug-in): $59-$79 each
- Build-Your-Own Set (2 Plug-ins): $99
- Build-Your-Own Set (4 Plug-ins): $149
- Complete Suite (8 Plug-ins) : $279
Ty Segall | Frog Meets Fly | Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins
The range of clean, dirty, and complex tones available from this high-quality, carefully crafted Dumble modeler make it a formidable studio and performance device.
Fantastic variation in many delicious sounds makes it a bargain. High-quality. Easy to use and customize. Killer studio path to lively, responsive guitar sounds.
Price may be hard for some to swallow if they don’t leverage the whole of its potential.
$399
UAFX Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special
uaudio.com
I’ve never played a realDumble. I’d venture most of us haven’t. But given my experiences with James Santiago’s UAFX modeling pedals, most recently theUAFX Lion, I plugged in the new Dumble-inspired UAFX Enigmatic confident I’d taste at least the essence of that very rare elixir. You could argue there is no definitive Dumble sound. Each was customized to some extent for the customer, and they are renowned nearly as much for dynamic responsiveness and flexibility as their singing, complex, clean-to-dirty palettes.
The Enigmatic nails the flexibility, for sure. To my ears, its tone foundation lives somewhere on a sliver of Venn diagram where a black-panel Fender and a 50-watt Hiwatt intersect. It’s alive, dimensional, snappy, sparkly, massive, and, at the right EQ settings, hot and excitable. But the Enigmatic’s powerful EQ and gain controls, multiple virtual cab and mic pairings, rock, jazz, and custom voices, plus additional deep, bright, and presence controls enable you to travel many leagues from that fundamental tone. The customization work you can do in the app enables significant changes in the Enigmatic’s tone profile and responsiveness, too. All these observations are made tracking the Enigmatic straight to a DAW—making the breadth of its personality even more impressive. But the Enigmatic sounds every bit as lively at the front end of an amp, and black-panel Fenders are a primo pairing for its saturation and sparkly attributes. The Enigmatic is nearly $400, which is an investment. But considering the ground I covered in just a few days with it, and the quality and variety of sounds I could conjure with the unit just sitting on my desk, the performance-to-price ratio struck me as very favorable indeed.
This month’s mod Dan’s uses a 500k linear pot, a 1.5H inductor (L) with a 0.039 µF (39nF) cap (C), and a 220k resistor (R) in parallel.
This simple passive mod will boost your guitar’s sweet-spot tones.
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. In this column, we’ll be taking a closer look at the “mid boost and scoop mod” for electric guitars from longtime California-based tech Dan Torres, whose Torres Engineering seems to be closed, at least on the internet. This mod is in the same family with the Gibson Varitone, Bill Lawrence’s Q-Filter, the Gresco Tone Qube (said to be used by SRV), John “Dawk” Stillwells’ MTC (used by Ritchie Blackmore), the Yamaha Focus Switch, and the Epiphone Tone Expressor, as well as many others. So, while it’s just one of the many variations of tone-shaping mods, I chose the Torres because this one sounds best to me, which simply has to do with the part values he chose.
Don’t let the name fool you, this is a purely passive device—nothing is going to be boosted. In general, you can’t increase anything with passive electronics that isn’t already there. Period. But you can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent (so … “boost” in guitar marketing language). Removing highs makes lows more apparent, and vice versa. In addition, the use of inductors (which create the magnetic field in a guitar circuit) and capacitors will create resonant peaks and valleys (bandpasses and notches), further coloring the overall tone. This type of bandpass filter only allows certain frequencies to pass through, while others are blocked, and it all works at unity gain.
“You can’t increase anything with passive electronics that isn’t already there … but you can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent.”
All the systems I mentioned above are doing more or less the same thing, using different approaches and slightly different component values. They are all meant to be updated tone controls. Our common tone circuit is usually a variable low-pass filter (aka treble-cut filter), which only allows the low frequencies to pass through, while the high frequencies get sent to ground via the tone cap. Most of these systems are LCR networks, which means that there is not only a capacitor (C), like on our standard tone controls, but also an inductor (L) and a resistor (R).
In general, all these systems are meant to control the midrange in order to scoop the mids, creating a mid-cut. This can be a cool sounding option, e.g. on a Strat for that mid-scooped neck and middle tone.
Dan Torres offered his “midrange kit” via an internet shop that is no longer online, same with his business website. The Torres design is a typical LCR network and looks like the illustration at the top of this column.
Dan’s design uses a 500k linear pot, a 1.5H inductor (L) with a 0.039 µF (39nF) cap (C), and a 220k resistor (R) in parallel. Let’s break down the parts piece by piece:
Any 500k linear pot will do the trick, in one of the rare scenarios where a linear pot works better in a passive guitar system than an audio pot.
(C) 0.039µF cap: This is kind of an odd value. Keeping production tolerances of up to 20 percent in mind, any value that is close will do, so you can use any small cap you want for this. I would prefer a small metallized film cap, and any voltage rating will do. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original design, use any 0.039 µF low-tolerance film cap.
(L) 1.5H inductor: The original design uses a Xicon 42TL021 inductor, which is easy to find and fairly priced. This one is also used in the Bill Lawrence Q-Filter design, the Gibson standard Varitone, and many other systems like this. It’s very small, so it will fit in virtually every electronic compartment of a guitar. It has a frequency range of 300 Hz up to 3.4 kHz, with a primary impedance of 4k ohms (that’s the one we want to use) and a secondary impedance of 600 ohms. Snip off the three secondary leads and the center tap of the primary side and use the two remaining outer primary leads; the primary side is marked with a “P.” On the pic, you can see the two leads you need marked in red, all other leads can be snipped off. You can connect the two remaining leads to the pot either way; it doesn’t matter which of them is going to ground when using it this way.
Drawing courtesy of singlecoil.com
(R) 220k: use a small axial metal film resistor (0.25 W), which is easy to find and is the quasi-standard.
Other designs use slightly different part values—the Bill Lawrence Q-filter has a 1.8H L, 0.02 µF C and 8k R, while the old RA Gresco Tone Qube from the ’80s has a 1.5H L, 0.0033 µF C, and a 180k R, so this is a wide field for experimentation to tweak it for your personal tone.
This mid-cut system can be put into any electric guitar not only as a master tone, but also together with a regular tone control or something like the Fender Greasebucket, or it can be assigned only to a certain pickup. It can be a great way to enhance your sonic palette, so give it a try.
That’s it! Next month, we’ll take a deeper look into how to fight feedback on a Telecaster. It’s a common issue, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
The two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.
Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.
Build quirks will turn some users off.
$279
Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io
Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.
Two Plus One
Gravity Well’s design and control set make it a charm to use. Two footswitches engage tremolo and wavefolder independently, and one of three toggle switches swaps the order of the effects. The two 3-way switches toggle different tone and voice options, from darker and thicker to brighter and more aggressive. (Mixing and matching with these two toggles yields great results.)
The wavefolder, which has an all-analog signal path bit a digitally controlled LFO, is controlled by knobs for both gain and volume, which provide enormous dynamic range. The LFO tremolo gets three knobs: speed, depth, and waveform. The first two are self-explanatory, but the latter offers switching between eight different tremolo waveforms. You’ll find standard sawtooth, triangle, square, and sine waves, but Cosmodio also included some wacko shapes: asymmetric swoop, ramp, sample and hold, and random. These weirder forms force truly weird relationships with the pedal, forcing your playing into increasingly unpredictable and bizarre territories.
This is all housed in a trippy, beautifully decorated Hammond 1590BB-sized enclosure, with in/out, expression pedal, and power jacks. I had concerns about the durability of the expression jack because it’s not sealed to its opening with an outer nut and washer, making it feel more susceptible to damage if a cable gets stepped on or jostled near the connection, as well as from moisture. After a look at the interior, though, the build seems sturdy as any I’ve seen.
Splatterhouse Audio
Cosmodio’s claim that the refractor is a “first-of-its-kind” modulation effect is pretty grand, but they have a point in that the wavefolder is rare-ish in the guitar domain and pairing it with tremolo creates some pretty foreign sounds. Barton McGuire, the Massachusetts-based builder behind Cosmodio, released a few videos that demonstrate, visually, how a wavefolder impacts your guitar’s signal—I highly suggest checking them out to understand some of the principles behind the effect (and to see an ’80s Muppet Babies-branded keyboard in action.)
By folding a waveform back on itself, rather than clipping it as a conventional distortion would, the wavefolder section produces colliding, reflecting overtones and harmonics. The resulting distortion is unique: It can sound lo-fi and broken in the low- to mid-gain range, or synthy and extraterrestrial when the gain is dimed. Add in the tremolo, and you’ve got a lot of sonic variables to play with.
Used independently, the tremolo effect is great, but the wavefolder is where the real fun is. With the gain at 12 o’clock, it mimics a vintage 1x10 tube amp cranked to the breaking point by a splatty germanium OD. A soft touch cleans up the signal really nicely, while maintaining the weirdness the wavefolder imparts to its signal. With forceful pick strokes at high gain, it functions like a unique fuzz-distortion hybrid with bizarre alien artifacts punching through the synthy goop.
One forum commenter suggested that the Gravity Well effect is often in charge as much the guitar itself, and that’s spot on at the pedal's extremes. Whatever you expect from your usual playing techniques tends to go out the window —generating instead crumbling, sputtering bursts of blubbering sound. Learning to respond to the pedal in these environments can redefine the guitar as an instrument, and that’s a big part of Gravity Well’s magic.
The Verdict
Gravity Well is the most fun I’ve had with a modulation pedal in a while. It strikes a brilliant balance between adventurous and useful, with a broad range of LFO modulations and a totally excellent oddball distortion. The combination of the two effects yields some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard from an electric guitar, and at $279, it’s a very reasonably priced journey to deeply inspiring corners you probably never expected your 6-string (or bass, or drums, or Muppet Babies Casio EP-10) to lead you to.
Kemper and Zilla announce the immediate availability of Zilla 2x12“ guitar cabs loaded with the acclaimed Kemper Kone speaker.
Zilla offers a variety of customization to the customers. On the dedicated Website, customers can choose material, color/tolex, size, and much more.
The sensation and joy of playing a guitar cabinet
Sometimes, when there’s no PA, there’s just a drumkit and a bass amp. When the creative juices flow and the riffs have to bounce back off the wall - that’s the moment when you long for a powerful guitar cabinet.
A guitar cabinet that provides „that“ well-known feel and gives you that kick-in-the-back experience. Because guitar cabinets can move some serious air. But these days cabinets also have to be comprehensive and modern in terms of being capable of delivering the dynamic and tonal nuances of the KEMPER PROFILER. So here it is: The ZILLA 2 x 12“ upright slant KONE cabinet.
These cabinets are designed in cooperation with the KEMPER sound designers and the great people from Zilla. Beauty is created out of decades of experience in building the finest guitar cabinets for the biggest guitar masters in the UK and the world over, combined with the digital guitar tone wizardry from the KEMPER labs. Loaded with the exquisit Kemper Kone speakers.
Now Kemper and Zilla bring this beautiful and powerful dream team for playing, rehearsing, and performing to the guitar players!
ABOUT THE KEMPER KONE SPEAKERS
The Kemper Kone is a 12“ full range speaker which is exclusively designed by Celestion for KEMPER. By simply activating the PROFILER’s well-known Monitor CabOff function the KEMPER Kone is switched from full-range mode to the Speaker Imprint Mode, which then exactly mimics one of 19 classic guitar speakers.
Since the intelligence of the speaker lies in the DSP of the PROFILER, you will be able to switch individual speaker imprints along with your favorite rigs, without needing to do extensive editing.
The Zilla KEMPER KONE loaded 2x12“ cabinets can be custom designed and ordered for an EU price of £675,- UK price of £775,- and US price of £800,- - all including shipping (excluding taxes outside of the UK).
For more information, please visit kemper-amps.com or zillacabs.com.