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Moog Minitaur

Size doesn't matter sound wise

Minitaur overview of components inside

The "Ladder" and the "Enter the Labyrinth ..." are marked read here

The Minitaur is build from SMD components mainly. The well known and famous Moog filter ladder is build discrete, but this newer components then the old 70ies Moogs. Nothing bad here, but a cool price tag.

This little synth is only compact in size, not in sound. It is not meant to serve as a synth for fX sounds or leadlines. But it is a superb bold bass synth. It is sound wise a compact version of the Moog Taurus III and the vintage Moog Taurus. So be prepared to experience the best bold bass synth you can imagine. This is the famous fat bass sound so many other synths are claiming to deliver but never actually did.
I guess C129, C132, C148 and C149 are the capacitors of the filter. The original Moog Taurus used a transistor array chip CA3045 for the top and bottom transistor pair. The Voyager uses a CA3086 transistor array for all 5 pairs of transistors of the filter ladder. On the Minitaur they (Q15, Q16, Q19, Q20 and Q22) are discrete transistor pairs.
The Moog Taurus III uses through-hole capacitors (C103-C105) for the filter ladder. And SMD transistor pairs (Q06-Q10). So the Minitaur filter is not exactly the same as on the Taurus III. But who cares, if the sound is right.

Changes to the original Taurus and the Taurus III are:


Minitaur transistor ladder draw on the PCB

Next to the components that make up the transistor ladder filter is a tiny ladder printed on the board.


Minitaur _ENTER THE LABYRINTH_ written inside

At about the middle of the board, there is the inscription "ENTER THE LABYRINTH ..." printed on the board. This is referring to the Greek mythology of the Minotaur.