Minimoog Released by Dutch Customs

Quite some time ago I sold my Moog Little Phatty and some other stuff to make place for a classic Moog Minimoog. I found a very nice one on E-bay in the USA. It looked great in the pictures and according to the seller it worked perfectly. So I decided to go for this one. I got a tracking code from the shipping but for a long time I didn't hear anything. Then I got a letter from the Dutch postal services that it was intercepted at Dutch Customs and that the seller didn't fill in (all?) the necessary customs forms. Well I have no idea, but they wanted me to check it in. I had to send proof of the payment as well to determine the value. And then I didn't hear anything again for weeks. I called Dutch Postal Services a couple of times, but every time the same story. They couldn't help me.

And then yesterday suddenly they were at my door asking for cash payment of the import tax :( That was to be expected but still a setback, since it was not cheap. I didn't have the money at the time so I agreed to pick it up today from the post office. And I did that this afternoon, so it finally arrived today. I got it out of the box right away but decided to leave it acclimatize for a while before I would try it on. I found a nice spot for it in my analog corner and doesn't it fit nicely there? After dinner I tried it out and it works perfectly! And how nice it sounds :)

And I really love the look of the wood that is on it. I don't even know if it is original or not by the way. My friend Hanz did tell me that this one has the old type oscillators on it judging from the smooth (not ribbed) modulation and pitch bend wheel. These old oscillators tend to sound a bit warmer than the newer ones I understood from various websites. But since I never played a Minimoog before I can't compare that. What I DO know is that it is so much nicer than the Moog Little Phatty. It sounds very nice and analog indeed and much warmer than the Moog Voyager RME that I still have as well. The only disadvantage is of course that you can't save any presets on it. But that forces you to make unique sounds right :)

And that is exactly what I did the last two hours. Making sounds. I already recorded some nice sound effects. The auto modulation of the filter is really nice on this machine and even the white and pink noise sounds great. The filter is unbelievably smooth and I love that already. The only thing lacking on it for me is Midi, but I understood that it is possible to retro fit it on the Minimoog so I'll probably do that as soon as possible. Another very clever thing on it by the way is the 440 Hz button to tune it easily on hearing. I'm sure this is a synthesizer you will hear a lot on my future productions.