Not Rick but..MOOG TAURUS 3! pedals

[aceonbass]

Since it was a Dixieland band, it was probably always on the tuba setting.

[superdick2112]

440 days... Thats how long I have been waiting for my Taurus 3s. Ordered on Dec. 2nd of '08, mere days after the announcment, they are now at last in transit & scheduled to arrive this Weds., complete w/factory Anvil-style road case! They have a 100% analog sound engine that is an exact sonic clone of the Taurus 1s, but they also have an arpeggiator, a step-sequencer, 4 factory and 48 user-definable presets. I can't wait to hear (and feel) them laying down the foundation for my 4003 and 4004Cii basses. Very cool to see Bad Ronbo from the Killer Dwarfs posting here! Ronbo, I loved your work on "Dirty Weapons", one of the K.D.s finest...

[BAD RONBO, KiLLeR DWaRfS]

thanx for the kudos, superdick ! weapons rocks, especially the title track. we were supposed to ship out a buch of cd's to the troops in the gulf war, but "stormin' norman" shut down the theatre before we could get them on the plane.

what # on the moog list were you at when you put up the deposit ?

[superdick2112]

Heidi at Moog told me I was around the 100th order, but it was hard to tell - Moog's email was jammed up with orders from the Thanksgiving weekend. The entire production run has been sold, but dealers like Sweetwater & Bass Central still have some unspoken for. Shipping finally began this week, and it looks like my serial # should be well below 100, maybe closer to # 50, based on what fellow owners are posting. If you haven't been there already, Moog's web site has some great audio & video clips of the T-3. I've spent the past week reading a downloaded copy of the manual so I'll have a handle on them when they arrive. Funny, I recall my Taurus 1 manual being about 10 pages, while the new one is closer to 60!

[BAD RONBO, KiLLeR DWaRfS]

you must have had a small owners manual. i got one from mike bucki in lockport, ny, (ex-moog employee) he has a ton of them n.o.s.) and they have the schematics and trouble shooters in it as well. 48 pages in the 8/'78 and 12/'80 manual. mind you i also have service tech photocopies from steves music in toronto in the mid '80's printed 8/'74 as well. when my rickenfaker buddy put in his order , he was near the end of the 1000 units. if there is a greater market for them , they'll probably go into a second series. i don't like the foot roller pots for the volume and filter. reminds me of the gibson series of maestro black n' silver wedge pedals norlin put out in the late seventies. i think "bass balls" was one ...a phase shifter...i used on on my p-bass back in '76-'77. although, moog was a norlin company as well...maybe those series of pedals were designed by moog ??? i've got a '75 taurus mk1.

[superdick2112]

Agreed on the rollers - while they look kind of cool being illuminated & all (the wheel lights actually pulse on & off with the LFO rate), I too prefer the old sliders. You didn't worry if they were going to hold up, and they had the added benefit of covering the chassis slots & keeping dust out. I think this change may have been done out of necessity, as the right roller also acts as one of the 2 primary potientiometers/encoders for the programming interface. One thing I do like about them - during performance, the right roller can be assigned to control any of one the parameters - LFO & arpeggiator rates, emphasis, decay time, pitch bend, glide rate, etc., - not just the filter cutoff. Overall, they remind me of my Ric 4004Cii - while its not quite the same beast as my trusty 4003, it is a new & fresh approach to a cherished design.

[hieronymous]

My Taurus III has landed - gonna open it up today!

[seyesbass]

Best wishes on the new pedals!
I was mixing the Taurus up with some old organ pedals a friend used to have that were more "fanned out" like church organ types..I think they were Hammond.

My Pk5s work great with the EMU Xtreme Lead and the price was only around $500 for the two.
I only scratch the surface of what the synth unit can do but the Moog sounds and Prophet are spot on.
What I have done is built a case to put the synth unit together with the PK5s and I suppose I could stick a volume pedal in the chain if I wanted to.

Those Taurus 3 pedals would look better onstage though but at 2 grand I would have to sell a Rick which is not going to happen.

[cheyenne]

Anyone seen these yet???

http://www.bassemporium.com/item.php?sku=2715

[Becky]

I did once almost buy a set of mk1 Tauri but decided that the £700 or so was more than I could really afford. And they'd lost their little glass door anyway.

Back in 2004, Bob Moog was doing a series of talks alongside Jean-Jacques Perrey, entitled "How the Moog Synthesiser Became a Household Name". The Minimoog Voyager was only a couple of years old, and Bob talked extensively about the improvements he'd made, such as MIDI and touchscreens and memorybanks. It was pretty obvious what ought to happen next, so I asked him after the talk.

"I'm a bass player," I began, "and I was wondering if you have any plans to do the same for your original Taurus pedals?"
"Ah, no, no plans." he said, matter-of-factly.
"Oh, I kinda thought there might be a bit of a market for them."

So while I've been tapping away since then on my PK-5 pedalboard MIDI'd up to a Roland D20 -- which actually does some decent pedal bass sounds, once you program the heck out of it... -- the rotter only stole my idea didn't he? He did give me his autograph, though.

[hieronymous]

It arrived! First impressions - BASS - the output is hot and I was shaking the foundations! I was going to put it through my Phil Jones Bass Briefcase, but I'm kind of glad I didn't! Instead, I'm going to run my bass through that and the Taurus through my slightly bigger rig: Glockenklang Soul Head and Epiphani 2X10:



Got to start rehearsing - have a gig on Feb. 27, drummers flying in next Monday, so I have to get familiar with this beast!

And Becky, if he did steal your idea, then thank you very much!!!

[BAD RONBO, KiLLeR DWaRfS]

the way you've got 'em on the table like that reminds me of phil collins bassist that had his taurus mk1 on a stand and played them with his fists ! how novel an approach in the art of rock/pop music and so englishly pompous !

some other company had a set that looked similar to the new taurus but a more rectangular box ?

[superdick2112]

Just recieved my T-3s today (sn # 0028), and they are freakin awesome! Since I ordered them, I've spent the last 442 days wondering if they would measure up to my old Mk-1s, and I'm glad to report that they are everything my T-1s were and then some! As soon as I plugged them in I was transported back to 1982, when I was playing my AzureGlo 4001 and backing it up with my Taurus Mk-1s. These days its a JetGlo 4003, a MapleGlo 4004Cii and the Taurus 3s. "The more things change, the more they stay the same..."

[hieronymous]

I've made a couple of soundclips - they're just with a Tascam DR-1 set in front of the amp(s), I still haven't set the input gain too well yet, so they're on the quiet side but I thought I would post them anyway:

T3 experiment 1 - just me playing it with my hands, in full-on "Taurus on the table pretension mode" - this one has some digital distortion on the higher notes. The rig is like in the picture I posted - Glockenklang amp, Epiphani 2X10 speaker cab

T3 experiment 2 - this time it's on the floor through the Glock, and my '76 4001 autumnglo on the bridge pickup, through PJB briefcase

[harrek]

Just recieved my T-3s today (sn # 0028), and they are freakin awesome! Since I ordered them, I've spent the last 442 days wondering if they would measure up to my old Mk-1s, and I'm glad to report that they are everything my T-1s were and then some! As soon as I plugged them in I was transported back to 1982, when I was playing my AzureGlo 4001 and backing it up with my Taurus Mk-1s. These days its a JetGlo 4003, a MapleGlo 4004Cii and the Taurus 3s. "The more things change, the more they stay the same..."

Bah, all of you front of the line people making us end of the line people jealous! At least I know the wait is much shorter now.