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The extended keyboard makes this the most playable Minimoog yet.

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Here's a playground moment we remember from childhood - see if this rings a bell with you too.

There are three kids, and one of them says 'I'm Spiderman and I can shoot webs, so I'm the coolest'. The next one says 'yeah, but I'm Batman which means I'm super-strong and every bad guy on earth is terrified of me, so I'm the coolest'. At the end, a third kid says 'well I'm Superman so I can fly, fire lasers out of my eyes AND turn back time by making the earth spin backwards.'

There's a brief moment of silence and the first two shuffle off defeated. This is what sprung to mind when we first laid eyes on the XL.

"It looks like someone designed the XL in Photoshop under the title 'Fantasy Moog'."

There are now several 'modern' analogue synths you can buy to enhance your studio with a 21st Century take on the sound of yesteryear and you can imagine them all like kids in the playground, arguing over who's got the most power.

But the Moog Voyager XL kind of settles the debate once and for all. It's effortlessly the coolest synthesizer we've ever seen, had the honour of switching on and writing words about.

There are several reasons why it ticks so many boxes at once - the first is that this is a Minimoog to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the original, still-loved classic, borrowing the brains and heart of that synth yet dragging it into the here and now.

Secondly, it adds features from the current Moog Voyager series instruments, including digital control and sound storage, a large touch surface, plus additional performance and MIDI controls.

The 'XL' bit, though, takes the biscuit, as this instrument also adds a full patch panel in the top-left-hand corner to take sound design to a new level, sticks an extended 61-note keyboard along the bottom and even adds an extra performance tool in the form of a long ribbon controller.

It's an instrument that simultaneously honours Bob Moog's legacy, offers a tool set relevant to modern studio techniques and provides a sound to die for. Oh and it costs a little over £4,000. Ahem, moving on…

Cast a greedy eye

The XL is a wonder to behold even before you've plugged it into your speakers. It looks like someone designed it in Photoshop under the title 'Fantasy Moog' as, once you've propped the control panel up to its famous 45-degree angle, you're greeted by an array of controls to make any synth lover salivate.

From left to right you'll firstly find the patchbay featuring no fewer than 65 ports to allow you to patch together the programs of your dreams, with rotary dials offering support where relevant.

Then, to the right, comes a collection of dials known so well to Minimoog enthusiasts. These are organised on either side of the central LCD display with the classic Minimoog three-oscillator architecture with waveform and octave choices across all three and independent frequency tuning dials for oscillators 2 and 3.