NAMM 2010: Moog Taurus III bass pedal on show

Moog Taurus III: bass via your feet.
Moog Taurus III: bass via your feet.

Moog's Taurus I was a pedal-powered bass synth that made its debut in 1976, with the follow-up Taurus II arriving in 1981. At Winter NAMM 2010, Moog was showing off the Taurus III, a limited edition product that's said to be "absolutely faithful to the Taurus I sound".

Featuring a 100% analogue signal path that's based entirely on the Taurus I's synth circuits, the Taurus III boasts a pair of VCOs, a VCF and a VCA. There's also one ASD VCA envelope, one AD VCF envelope and an LFO, plus an arpeggiator that can be synced to MIDI clock or tap tempo.

Control comes via 13 velocity-sensitive bass pedals, a volume footwheel controller and a programmable footwheel controller. There are also nine footswitches for selecting banks and presets, transpose, glide on/off, decay on/off, and octave up/down.

You can find out more about the Taurus III on the Moog website. The company plans to produce less than 1,000 of them, so if you want one, get in quick.

Ben Rogerson

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it.