Seriously, I would pay good money to see that!

I'd pay good money for a stick w/ moog guitar / lapsteel pickups in it..
(assuming it works with the low action of a stick) even if it was just the melody side.

I had an original Minimoog (purchased 1976) that saw a lot of use in the 80s and faded in the 90s. It ended up in the attic for about a decade until someone told me it was worth something (2005-ish). I pulled it out, cleaned, serviced and midified it. I sold in on eBay for about $1600, which may be about what I paid for it all those years ago.

So I thought long and hard and in the midst of all the chatter, I stumbled onto a mint condition Juno-60 and pulled the trigger on a purchase. I made a ton of recordings on one of these back in the 80s and always regretted letting it get away. Hopefully the sound on this will be as fat as I remember it.

Very cool, Glenn. If you did not try it back in the day, look up how to put the Juno-60 into "Unison" mode where all 6 voices are assigned to a single key (making it mono). I bet you get "fat" that way for sure.

Good luck with the purchase Glenn! If you search around you may be able to find some mods or custom chips for it that will add features.

Years ago I bought a JX3P - and now it seems there is a 're-birth' of users buying these.

I do appreciate the physical aesthetic of having the controls at your finger tips. I recently purchased an iPad and will be loading Touch OSC or one of the other controller programs on it to control my VSTi's - will be nice to have 'touch screen' control.

I need to reinstall Reason 4. After my last system purge I never got around to reinstalling it. I think having to install NI's Komplete 7 and KORE put me off of doing more software installs for a while (the K7 install is very time consuming..)

I remember some years back seeing an interview with Thomas Dolby, and he was lamenting how much creativeness was lost when synths went digital. His comments were exactly related to the fact that he had muscle memory built up that if for example, he wanted his sound to be slightly brighter or darker while playing, his hand instictively knew which knob to grab and twist. He said he couldn't get the same connection to the instrument by thinking about having to navigate through menus to find a parameter to adjust numerically. I thought was a great comment, and I never forgot.

BTW, Dave. I've got an iPad with Touch OSC running to control various parms of soft synths also. It's a pretty decent system. First and foremost I am a Reason/Record user so that's what I use it with. But it works great with anything you can route Midi CC to. If you happen to be an Abelton Live user also, check out an app called touchAble too.

Mark

The Moogs are really sweet sounding, and trust me no emulation VST or Hardware is quite "there" yet, though some get close. I don't know if you'd want to gig with a laptop but some of my favorite software VAs with a vintage sounds are Poly-Ana, Sawer, Olga, XILS 3 and Aalto.

However, none quite have that special something... they're 80% there on most sounds you'll want, but there are sounds that use lots of modulation and filter sweeps that show software has a way to go. There are some good less expensive ways to go than a Voyager.

For instance, I got a Studio Electronics ATC-1 for $500 and it sounds fantastic. Not a Minimoog, but it does capture that smooth moogish sound. I also get a lot of mileage out of the $400 DSI MoPho. (The polyphonic version of it is called the Tetr4, it's about $799) The problem with both are that to get those instruments in their price points they cheaped out on the user interface. The ATC-1 is pretty easy to program with it's choose parameter-single knob set up, but not easy to tweak for a live performance unless you have MIDI set up to do so. The MoPho and Tetr4 have no real interface to speak of, though parameters can be assigned to a number of data encoders on the front panel. Any serious sound design needs to be done with their software editors, which are pretty good. For a bit more, there are keyboard versions of the DSI synths that have real UIs.... and the Prophet '08 which has the same voice architecture and a real UI. It comes in keyboard or rack form. (I've got the rack)

There's also the Dark Energy semi modular which can be had for $700 I think. No presets, but it sounds really good. Not moogish either, but analog for sure. Lots of possibilities but unless you don't mind dealing with patch cables it might be cumbersome for a live performance.

As for hardware VA... I'm convinced that nothing that's available is any better than a good software synth. I tried out a Roland SH-201 and I thought it sounded horrible. I did hear demos of the new M-Audio Venom, and that sounded interesting. Very aggressive. I'd have to demo it first hand. I've heard it's not the best build quality, though it's only $400. Makes sense, as the M-Audio controllers always felt like toys to me. Maybe that's no big deal to a Stick player who'll only trigger it via MIDI. It also has limited on board UI and all major sound design needs to happen via software. There are some expensive hardware VAs like the Virus that sound really good and are very flexible... but I sold my C and bought software with the proceeds and never looked back. Fine sounding instrument, but IMO, software is as good and in many ways better.

The one good thing about getting a Moog is that they do hold their value really well and if the past is any indication of the future, they may be worth more some day.