I tell you why

[cbx]

I like the Mopho so much. First, and most important. I am a guitar player by practice. I can not really play piano with both hands very well. Guitar, forever brutalized my other hand, making it impossible now to ever truly play anything but simple things with it.

The mopho is a little more than two octaves, beginning on F. But, there is something Mopho can do that Moog little phatty could not. It can be transposed to any key in the major scale, to any mode, to any thing western. Little phatty does have alternative tunings, but I don't use them anyway. This is hugely useful if you play with guitars in a band, and also if you are not a brilliant piano player. You can simply transpose and tune the keyboard anywhere you want to any key.

It doesn't have alternate scales, but I don't miss it. But, the keyboard is brilliant if you want to those old time jazz, rock, fusion sounds. It is very fast, and very good. People didn't like the name. Ok, it is silly. But the keyboard itself is brilliant.

Now with a tetra. You can extend it to 5 voices. It is a Prophet-5 really. Then, you can make all those rock organ sounds, like Deep Purple. It can make brilliant organ sounds of any kind you imagine. I always wanted to be able to play Hammond Organ. But my other hand, is a slab of meat from guitar. It's very hard to pick it up if you first played guitar.

That is just my take on a very brilliant instrument. It can be programmed so many diverse sounds. Imitating hammond organs. It can do all those fat squawky funky bass sounds. It is the most programmable synthesizer of its' kind with 4 LFOs, plus 4 patch bays. Quite a diverse instrument, not just some stupid techno machine.

Now, I wanted an instrument. Something real, to play. Not some stupid controller and software. The Little Phatty though, is very easy to get all those classic rock and fusion and jazz sounds out of it. It is the only moog I will ever need, it does it all. Not sure what a voyager does. But the Mopho can sound also great. The filter is very good. It sounds real. Not like digital stuff. Digital filters never sound right.  It doesn't sound like that moog filter. Which is the thickest sound ever. But still, it is punchy and tight.

[cbx]

Well there is a trick to getting a little phatty to transpose. You take a cv pedal and run it into the oscillator CV. You have to tune it by ear, and if you touch the pedal it will go out of tune. I could not understand why the little phatty would not transpose. Well, you can program the alternate scales I think to different keys. But the mopho you can transpose to key of say, G. Then tune the oscilaltors to some other mode. You can play in C minor. But you are playing very complicated key and scale changes. So, maybe they consider it cheating. Bah. It is not easy to do this like Chic Corea.

[cbx]

These are the only synthesizers I will get, even if I pretend I will get others. It's all I wanted. I have two Mopho and two tetra, that I set up like a Prophet-10. Like  a mini hammond organ. And I have the Little Phatty, which is actually really big to be honest.

[cbx]

I forgot the most important final touch. The mod and pitch wheels. Plus, you have pressure, velcoity, breath and foot controllers. All can be configured and programmed in their own little patch bay. You can play blues rock with this, or turn it into some strange saxophone.

I do have Yamaha TX81Z. Because I really like some sounds that FM can do. The Mopho can sort of pull this off, because you can modulate the filter frequency.

It would be cool, if you could do cross modulation of the oscillator. Also, if there was more FM options with the oscillators. But, you can still pull off alot of FM kind of sounds with the Mopho. You can't really do that with a Moog little phatty. You can do FM on Moog but it is different kind, doesn't sound digital or clangy.

[cbx]

Now, it's not to say I don't like the Little Phatty. I just don't play it as much, because it is much larger and heavier, and I have to clear things out to plug it in and play it. But, if I ever one day decide to make a small modular synthesizer this would be the main controller for it. I could send it to Moog to do a CV kit installation and turn it into a very useful modular system. If I decide to build a small modular system.

[cbx]

Maybe they will criticize me, tell me I am slow witted. That I am numb skull. Just like they heckled ozzy, told him he would go nowhere. He told them soon all the world will love it. And he was right.

[cbx]

Now you don't understand. The mopho is really just a single voice of the Prophet 08, but has sub oscillators. Since it only has 1 voice it can't stack, split or layer like Prophet 08. Tetra can do this. But Mopho x4 is a tetra with a larger keyboard. The Prophet Rev 2, can do all the Mopho can do, with up to 16 voices. But, you can't split it into multiple synthesizers like you could with the Tetra. It can only be multimode into A/B. Not sure, if the Mopho x4 is capable of muiltimode like the Tetra. The reason why the tetra is unique. Because it's multimode can split it into 4 different synthesizers.

But, only the mopho starts on F. It is a strange key to start on, but very useful for polyrhythymics you can pull off when you modify the way the last key works, so you can play it with both hands and it's very quick to get to the mod wheel from those registers.

[cbx]

So I will try to sum it up. What I think the best keyboard is for the kind of people who want to play it.

The mopho is definitely something a guitarist and bassist will like.
There was a special edition Mopho, it looks like a Mophox4 but only has one voice. It has more keys, and is black.
The Mophox4 is for someone who likes playing pads and chords.
The Prophet 08 and Rev 2, would be for a keyboardist who wants analog sounds
The Prophet-6 and Ob-6, are for analog purists, more specialized sound
The Prophet-12, for keyboardist and professionals

[cbx]

There was also the Evolver. This is now out of production. I did not get one because at that time it was just a little box. I was tired of little boxes, and really bad sounding digital keyboards. So I did not really understand what it was, until at last the Prophet returned.

IT would probably only interest collectors and specialists now.

[cbx]

I have to explain. For many years, I wanted a mini moog. I searched everywhere for one, they were so rare and impossible to find. Along the way, I found many analog synthesizers of ancient times. Usually in bad condition, and needing a million repairs.. I wanted the sound, you hear on those old recordings. They give me stupid stuff, like Arturia software and a controller. This isn't a mini moog. Then they confuse me, with all this junk I don't want. You get that sound, with a groove box. No, I hate it. You want that TB-303 thing. No, I hate it. I got one once, and hated it. The worst thing ever. Sounds retarded. I don't want to make techno. Ok, I like Goa Trance though, that was cool. But that is melodic and instrumental, at least the old stuff.

The microkorg was not bad really for the time, until at last I could get an instrument. The little phatty and the mopho. It's all I wanted. An instrument, that sounded like the real thing. Because it is the real thing. I don't want Ronald TB-303 ever. I hate it. I never understood why people want it. It sucks.

[cbx]

I didn't really care much about the stupid arguments like DCO vs VCO. If Arturia would have made a mini moog controller with a digital emulator, it would probably have been fine with me. It was a not a minimoog because there is no instrument

Korg did make a MS-20 controller, which was pretty cool. But, you needed a computer to play it. Like, they never understood the concept of an instrument? But they made them. I never played a Prophet-5 because they were so rare. I only played a Prophet-10. It is an instrument see. Not just software.

But then they made the real thing again. So might as well get the real thing. And everyone is tired of it all because of all the goats making people angry about VCO and DCO and transistors vs opamp garbage.

[cbx]

The millenials and geny or whatever, they won't really understand now that computers 20 years ago would always crash and blue screen. I really can not take Window 95 on stage with a controller because it will crash. Now, they are much better. But, it left a bad taste for me, trying to make a song on a PC and the machine crashes or destroys your files. Which is why some people kept their Atari ST for so along. At least they worked and didn't crash.

[cbx]

Well anyways, I just wanted a mini moog. The Prophet-10. It was HUGE. It was HEAVY. It was SCARY. I'm pretty that guy had hotrodded it. I never heard a synthesizer like that before. So huge. The sound though, well it was nuclear fire. Like the OB-8 I played. Sounds like fire in those circuits. I really don't know, they don't make them like that anymore. Which is probably good, because they didn't work very reliably. But, they sure sounded incredibly hot.

I watched the tech tune an OB-8. Took hours to go through it all. I was so amazed when I let the Little Phatty auto calibrate itself. So cool, the little robot inside it can tune it like the tech did, but automatically.

[cbx]

I did have a six track for a little while. I also had a Sequential drum machine. Very funny machine. Not the tempest. I can't remember what they called it. It had samples in it. It went with the Sixx track. To me the Prophet 08 sounds more like the six track did. The prophet-10 was just some rock star keyboard. The Six track was cool but I can't remember what was wrong with it.

[cbx]

Well to be fair, I have not played a Prophet-6 or OB-6. I am pretty happy with what I got. And now, it is time to go.

[cbx]

Honestly the new ones sound pretty much like the originals to me. The tech who had some of those extremely rare ones was pretty well known for his modifications to B3s. But I had never even seen or heard of the ultra rare equipment he had in his collections, so I was kind of biased for a long time because I didn't know the difference. I don't want my stuff modified anyways. It causes too many problems.

[cbx]

I am sorry I post this you can delete it. I am not feeling well today, I slept forever and I'm still tired.

[chysn]

I've had both a Mopho Keyboard and a Little Phatty. I'm not interested in keyboard synths right now, but I wouldn't rule out someday getting another Mopho Keyboard.