Moog Rogue

Ahh The Rogue.... Talk about easy. This is as simple as it gets.. Twist, slide, press and instantly sweet sweet bleep bloop love. However, unless you have a pen and paper, or a photographic memory sometimes it's hard to get the same exact sound twice.

This baby is totally monophonic, and it defaults to the lower key pressed when you play two keys at the same time. 2 VCO'c 1 LFO Moog's legendary filter.... pitch wheel Mod wheel.. Assignable ASR for either filter or VCO... pretty basic. No midi, but retrofits are available online for around $100. Otherwise it's Voltage Control only... Rmember thats 1 volt = 1 octave

The rogue is pretty dang flexible... Loud LO Freq Bass or Screaming high leads.. Good sci-fi sounds and fx... True you won't sound like Kieth Emerson with this alone, but it sounds pretty freakin rad anyway. My pots sliders and all are clean... if you clean em once every so often they stay pretty crackle free.. If you don't take care of your moog it won't take care of you ;)

My Rogue has never let me down... When I bought the power regulator was fried inside... it took with it the output circuit (on the same pcb). once that was fixed I found the oscillators badly out of callibration. Since the trouble when I bought it from a dishonest Ebay-er It has served me well on the road and in the studio.

WWW.Moogmusicce.com This is Bob's thing. Now that he's got it back and it's his company again..... Some stuff is available. I got my Power supply new from Moog Music Custom Engineering For $25 and it arrived in Oregon from Buffalo in 4 days... Crazy

If this were stolen, I'd hunt down the bastard that took it. Congratulate him on his good taste then kick the &^#@ out of him. I Love this thing, next to my G&L bass this is my favorite Instrument. If you must hear it you can check it out at www.vintagesynth.com or hear my baby in the tracks posted at www.vivavoce.com

mine's a bit harder to use than the average because it has a few extra switches here and there, and I'm building a simple 8-step sequencer into the front edge below the keyboard.

if it were lost or stolen, I would be heartbroken- mine's unique. the longest it was away from me was when I lent it to a band called tiger for dates in the US when theirs caught fire (defective psu).
best modification for these synths is to put a proper mains socket in the rear and a decent 12-0-12 toroidal transformer inside the case.

everything is very straightforward and intuitive. there are few enough controls that within minutes you can find many different sounds by experimenting. it's very good live.

has the necessities. 2-VCO (square/saw), 1 LFO (square/saw/sample & hold), 1 filter, AR envelope, noise source, simple VCA and mixer, keyboard tracking. keyboard is small and no velocity/aftertouch. it has oscillator sync, which sounds incredible with the moog filter. has basic audio/CV/trig out, and audio input so you can run external sounds through it. it's not super versatile, but the sounds you can get with it are very nice.

i know everybody says this is no minimoog. well, a minimoog is no rogue either. the rogue has more gain in the filter than a mini, and with the oscillator sync, it can make timbres the mini isn't capable of. i liked the sound of my rogue so much that i sold my mini and bought an EMS synthi AKS to make more of the weird sounds i was looking for. the moog filter sounds so incredible. the bass sounds are deep and rich. it can get harsh or bubbly. for the money and how compact it is, this thing sounds amazing. i play it through a tape delay a lot, which sounds very nice. once again it's great for playing live because you can tweak things very easily while playing.

mine was a little beat up when i got it. there's some foam between the circuit board and the faceplate that deteriorates and turns to sticky, tar-like goo. i cleaned that out. i had to replace a few sliders and one key (got them from Modusonics). since these repairs i have never had a single problem, even when someone in my band knocked it off my farfisa and spilled a pint of beer on it (i cleaned it before playing it again)! i calibrate it about once a year. the oscillators are very stable. i usually have to tune them before a set, then i don't need to worry about it. it's very well built. i got a case for mine. the sliders can get banged around pretty easily.

Modusonics bought out all the Moog Music inventory when they went out of business. this is probably the best place to get parts. anybody can work on one.

if it were stolen i would definitely buy another one. i got a stellar deal on mine, but i think they're still under $500. i have modular gear (AKS, blacet/wiard) and i've had many monosynths (EML101, minimoog, OB1, etc). the sound and ease of use makes this one of my favorite machines around. i've used it on a few albums. i would buy one over a prodigy or micromoog. the only thing i would consider instead might be a source, only because it's programmable. but then i couldn't have as much fun live either. sometimes i wish it had separate control over the VCA and the filter, or just another envelope. but for what it is, it is great--a simple, compact, cheap, and very nice sounding monosynth.

This instrument is very easy to use. It has a bunch of knobs and sliders, keys, mod and pitch wheels that roll like a bagel down a San Francisco Street, a few ins and outs (I never used the audio in thing though) and hey presto. You'll be able to get some Moog sweetness out of this brat in no time if you're in love with it. It's black (no woody stuff), plasticky, relatively lightweight and small and amazingly, it still looks good in any setup. It has one groovy red "power" light. Switch off all studio lights, turn on the rogue and you're in the harbour district of Antwerp. Funky. Don't wait for green though.
I had a photocopied manual delivered with it. It's written by Herb Deutsch. I like that because I'm German. Sweet! Imagine you're Brazilian and you buy a Moog manual for the Source or something crazy, and you find out the manual's written by Herb Brazil! Imagine you're Swedish and your Moog Taurus Manual's written by Herb Sverige! Or picture getting a Minitmoog and the Manual were written by Mister Minit himself! Wouldn't you just feel right at home? I did. I loved the Manual. It was so cute! It even had some sound patches. They were al sweet, and I loved all of them. That's electronic music, dudes! Square waves, triangle waves. I loved each and every one of those waves. Really a shame that today's developers don't build this innocent stuff anymore. It's all Boom-Boom-Boom. Oh well, I'm getting older. Anyway, tha manual really is lovely. I used to get a kick out of reading all this stuff about wave forms.
Having a synth that's this EZ to use has always been a great big deal for me after 10+ years of MIDI sequenciing and stuff like that. I hate computers The only stuff I do with them is Mix n Master and make graphics & covers. Music has to be felt. Enter Moogs. Moogs are for inspiration and playing. Switch on the Rogue, pump it thru a reverb or echo and you're in outer space. Ok, I might as well say what Joe Everyone says regarding non Minimoogs: it's not a Minimoog. So what? a duck ain't no dog. A fish ain't no umbrella. A CD ain't no Ace Ventura. A PlayStation2 ain't no airplane. Ulala ain't no Lara (Ulala is way sweeter if you ax me). A Pizza... You get the point. I managed to get into this babe and spent years of quality time inside. Sold it though to buy a... guess what...

Features, shmeatures. This thing is a synthesizer. It synthesizes. It doesn't ask you if you're sure about stuff. It doesn't catch stupid viruses, It doesn't need any updates, patches, fixes, cheats, and it doesn't need MIS support. It doesn't need compatibility with anything. Period. No sequencer, no MIDI, no nothing, no display, no memory card slots, no presets or memory. Just some basic waveforms, noise, envelope (adr if i remember well) end of story. It has a trig thing that lets you repeat one note continuously. You can get some pseudo sequences done if your timing is straight. I love the glide sounds. Some dude once said, "Glide sounds in polyphonic instruments sound like choking a bunch of dogs". Glide sounds on a Rogue sound like glide sounds on a synthesizer. They glide. Like Bonny and Glide. Harhar.
It is monophonic. Monophonic synths are like a person's voice. you can sing with it. you can scream. or whistle. or hum. It makes blips, bloops, sample and hold, sines, squares, screamy sounds, windy stuff, wavey stuff, kickass basses and kickeroony-ass-a-diddly drones. The drones are a gas. Make a drone, activate the trig thing, switch attack to 10, release to maximum value, over oscillate it and you're on your way to Mars. With a reverb you're on your way to Beta Z.
The Rogue is excellent for electronic space music, If you love that. I do, and that's what the Rogue is all about: loving it. Peace, baby.

The sounds are pretty good, but they are only as good as you want them to be. Playing in realtime with those sliders is a shlepp though, because sliders tend to get crackly. I hate sliders on synths. God, why do people build sliders in synths? They suck. Imagine a Mac with sliders. Imagine a Rolls Royce with sliders. Imagine a Guinness with sliders. Imagine Dennis Pennis with sliders. Imagine Lara Croft with sliders. Will Smith with sliders. You know, the good things in life don't have sliders. They have knobs. I had my Rogue serviced and the sliders slid well, but compared to the groovy pots they were kinda tricky to handle when you wanted to record something spacey. sometimes you'd hit a crackly spot and that ruined the sound. But you can do some tweakaroony stuff with the contour knob and scream your ass off here. Nice. But as I said, the sounds are sweet, and you can get some expressive sounds out of it. It's not a Minimoog though (haha, I like that sentence.)

I had my Rogue for 3 years. Moved with it twice, gigged with it, rocked it, married it, hat three kids with it, took it to christmas dinners (last few things are bull), and it never let me down. My mixer let me down, my speakers let me down. Some friends let me down. This Moog never let me down. In fact, my Win98 PC let me down more often in any given month than this babe did in 3 years. Only thing that broke was the power supply. Had it repaired and aftwerwards I had a dream synthesizer. It sounds cool together with a Theremin. They complemented each other well, like brother and sister, husband and wife, fish and chips. Lovely! Okay, disregard the first two pairs.

Not much to say here. Unfortunately Rogues aren't being remade like the Minimoog (Voyager). I guess that if Moog would revamp all their synths like they are currently doing with the Minimoog, that would be extremely groovy. Imagine a Moog Rogue with a touchpad. Imagine a Moog Rogue with an extra oscillator or MIDI specs. A Rogue with some wood on the side (okay, that's almost a Prodigy), a Rogue with Bob Moogs name on it. A more affordable Moog that sounds kickbutt clean. Yeah.

I would cry me some rio grande-style rivers if it were stolen, but I managed to sell it for a nice price, because I wanted a Voyager (jumping jack, they are taking their time with the Performers Edition, man! But I know for sure it's worth the wait). I wouldn't lose a Rogue if I were you. Imagine someones face when they'd find a moog Rogue in Meadowhall or some other geeky place. "Mom, I just found this... thing here! What is it? - "Oh that? That's a Moog Rogue, let's give it to the lost and found dude. Poor jerk who lost it".
Well, I loved the Rogue and was all funky about it when I got it. It was my first Moog. It was love at first sight. I even loved the smell of it. It smelled like smoke, The guy whoowned it before me must have lungs like burnt Tesco bags.
I thought: Wow, does life get any better than this? Owning a Moog, man, that's something! I always wanted a Moog Modular, but that was out of my range, and the stories I heard about Minimoogs were too depressing. So I opted for the little rogue. I got the Rogue because it was the cheapest Model I could find in working condition at the time. But I never ever regretted buying it. It didn't lose too much of it's money value. I dusted it, and wiped off the smoke smell with a drop of febreze or something funny in soapy water (unplug stuff before you touch it with watery stuff, duh). I still love listening to my Moog Rogue recordings. They are without kidding some of my dearest things.
Okay, If I had a magic wand, this is my ideal Rogue: Wooden sides, no sliders, MIDI ins and outs., ane extra Oscillator. That's all it needs to be as sweet as a truckload of sugar topped with a ton of honey.
It was definitely worth the dough I paid for it. But remember, that this thing is monophonic, and you really wanna develop your own recording/playing technique, and that takes time, some good, some bad, just like singing does, or any other activity you do with just one thing you love, for instance writing with yer favorite pen, drinking your fave soda pop thru one straw, living with one sweet girl, etc. So when I heard the Voyager was out I immediately started selling stuff (including my Rogue) to get one. I am still waiting for it and hope they won't take too long now.
In conclusion, I would recommend this baby to people who like taking their time with electronic music production. It's easy to use, hase some nice melody, bass and fx sounds available and tuning was solid. the glide sound and some modulation is creamy and dreamy. Use it with reverb and FX and you're home free. you can always boost the bass or refine stuff with software if you want that. This is not a polyphonic workstation. It's fun. It's a synthesizer. I love saying that. But, it's not a Minimoog ;o)

I was getting good sounds out of it almost as soon as I got it.
It is a really simple synth to use but that also makes it rather limiting
in the amount of sounds it can create. Oh well.
Very easy to use live though, probably more than any other analoge synth I've tried.

It's fairly limited in its features and, of course, its monophonic but what it does it does very well.

The rogue excels at Dr. Dre/Bernie Worrell type lead sounds. For me, that's enough.
It also has great bass sounds.
But no real special effects type sounds like you can get with a minimoog.

Well, I bought mine used of course. The pitch bend wheel is total crap.
It totally puts the tuning out. Oh, well. Also the input and output jacks don't seem very sturdy
Other than that it holds up just fine and is a joy to use

For me it does exactly what I want it to. If you want a huge multitude of sounds pony up and get a minimoog other wise the rogue is a real deal and very fun to use

Quite simply a doddle to set up!
This is the first synth i owned and i learnt a lot from it.

The rogue has 2 vco's that are syncable.VCO 2 can be detuned over an octave and a bit.
There is one lfo 4 the pitch and vcf with 3 waveforms(triangle,square and random),one eg with attack,release and switchable sustain(a bit limiting)
The filter is a classic moog 24db lpf and is very meaty.An external signal can also be passed thru it.
No midi but i run mine with a kenton pro solo cv conversion box.

Ah the sounds!!!!
BIG basses,air style leads,303 acid and all sorts of other analog madness!!
I use mine mainly as a 303 emulator which with a bit of good sequencer programming(for the note slides)
is very,very convincing!!!

Ive had mine 11 years,ive gigged it many times and its never broken down.The tuning can be a bit wayward sometimes but i guess thats par 4 the course with any analog!!

There are a few web resources 4 moogs with advice on service and repair.

If you see one cheap get it!It aint a minimoog but then again rogues dont cost #1500!!!!!!!!

Very simple analog synth layout, everything you need, none of the frills that make a larger synth fun, but nice and small and easy to dial in.

Mono, like all my other kinda budget analog synths. Mod wheel is great for adding varying amounts of modulation. Filter section is awesome. If you turn up the emphasis slider you can tweak the cutoff and amount sliders to get piercing highs cascading smoothly across a sine-wave down to nice warm lows. Add modulation and get some classic synth effects. 3 fader mixer section is nice too, second "harmony" oscillator. Limited but strong in what it does.

I love the sounds this thing makes. It is very expressive and easy to control. Very intuitive. I play this through my SVT bass rig at gigs and it is brutal. Good modulation, awesome filter sweeps. If you're playing with a delay on you can add white noise slowly, quickly sweep up the mod wheel, then pull them both down and morph from a straight keyboard sound smoothly into wind and back out again. Very smooth overall, good layout of controls that leads to manipulating the tone on the fly becoming an integral function of parts I write with this instrument.

I've had a few problems with it, but repaired it with a little help from my friends. Small keyboard, but plenty of room to poke around inside. It's been on the road a lot and has actually held up really well. Find the worst faders, and move them to the spot where you use the fader the least, and put the best ones in the filter section where you should be playing them like the instrument they are. Oh yeah VCA Mode has a switch that lets whatever note you're playing hold infinitely, freeing up your hands to manipulate the more textural elements.

About three years or so ago I actually got an original manual from them for like $12. I got a schematic too. Also manual for the micromoog and repair guide. Moog Music in NY. I don't think they got any support besides selling you the old manuals though.

I would have to replace this if lost or stolen. I use it live!! I would be too scared to bring out any of my other much larger and less reliable analog synths. Couldn't afford one at the prices people are paying now. I got mine five years ago at a music store 10 minutes after it came in and it had no power supply, and the previous owner didn't know if it worked. The guys at the store were mad when I came back and told `em it worked great!!

This analogue mono synth is a must for those looking for that early 1980's sound and the controls are definately user friendly.

The analogue set up allows you to go further than the preset dullness of the 80's which were further deadend by the introduction of digital.

This machine might not be touch sensitive but what it loses in this mistake it makes up in its rich sounds which could be used in a varitey of musical styles including dance, classical and rock. Moog sounds can be found in all these genres and they work well!

This machine comes from the built to last era and boy does it show. It never lets you down, even in the worst of situations. I think that this machine is blessed with this rare quality. However like many things it may have suffered from wear and tear from the years of service that it has given you. But I think that if you check it out before hand and give it the once over and it seems to be alright then you could relie on it 100%.

If you can find the help it is extremely good usually. Although not dealing with the company first hand (I am not sure if the original company actually exists) I can sya that the people who usually work with moogs are dedicated to their survival and their wonderful power and look after them well. It would mean that you can always find someone who is willing to help.

Also parts are available (if you know where to look) as people are making them in the desperation caused by people saying, "you won't be able to get the parts for that anymore," when actually you could turn round and say "yes you can!"

This machine is an absoluting blessing as it comes from one of the original synethiser creators, who in the eyes of many is a god and rightly deserves this title.

This might not be the best of Moog machines but it still kicks good and is well worth a buy. If mine was stolen I would definately buy another moog.

The other thing I find about Moogs, although again this isn't the best of models for doing this with, is that the totally analogue format of the earlier models with their switches and dials makes it so much fun to experiment with and play with. You feel as if you have more of a part of making the sounds and being in control, rather than being a presser of buttons which I find on the later digital models of the mid/late 80's and 90's.

Easy intro to analogue synthesis - knobs and sliders, all real time, no memories. Nothing complicated. The manual (from what I remember) is easy to understand, but then there's nothing really complex about this synth.

Mono, obviously, 2 oscillators, not expandable as such (although I guess you can chain two together...if you can find two!). Audio input on the back allows you to use the filter to process another instrument or sound - I used to feed an old casiotone poly keyboard into it to get basic filter sweeps - and with the auto trigger switch, it was easy to get echoing and repeated chords (this was before digi fx were common or cheap).

None of the sounds are that complex...noise generator is good enough for wind, surf, helicopters etc. Good at analogue solo sounds - I used to stick it through a flanger to emulate Billy Currie from Ultravox in the early 80s. Nice bass sounds, but not "classic Moog".

I had it in my bedroom studio for several years before taking it out and using it live - no probs at all. Let it warm up, tune it and it stayed stable for several hours at a time - warm rooms, cold rehearsals, whatever. Never let me down. I switched it on recently for the first time in years, and apart from a couple of crackly sliders (soon fixed), it was as good as ever.

No idea - never needed support.

Definitely worth what I paid. For an easy to set up, expressive live synth, it has what I want. Don't use it much now in a MIDI based studio, but I've finally upgraded to a PC and sampling, so I daresay it'll be used to get some samples soon.

The Rogue is a classic (to some), non-computer controlled early 80's monosynth designed to be as cheap as Moog could make it. Of course, all patches must be dialed up in realtime. You can get some good basic sounds fast since the control panel is rather minimal, making it a nice mono to use in a live situation. The knobs and sliders are spaced apart such that stabing at controls while playing is not a problem. I have never seen a manual for this little beast, but don't let that stop you from buying a Rogue- it's a pretty self explanatory synth providing that you know a little about subtractive analog synthesis.

The Rogue has a 32-note keyboard (F to C) and is low note priority. It kind of has a cheap, plasticky feel, but is reliable and I have not had any problems with mistriggering or dead keys (yet). The action itself is relatively fast, with notes triggering after only a little key travel. The Rogue has a few features that, I guess, could be considered effects. Portamento is onboard and goverened by a single knob, from off to a medium-slow glide. The LFO not only offers the typical triangle and square, but sample and hold as well. Great for those spooky robotic bleeps and random filter steps. The synthesizer itself has two oscillators, with a switch that commonly pitches them at 8' 16' or 32'. A waveform switch is shared between the two oscillators offering saw or square wave. Osc 2 can be detuned, harmonized, or an octave above Osc 1 by turning an interval knob. Oscillator sync lashes them back togather producing some nice metallic, hard edged sounds. The oscillators can also be put into overdrive mode giving you a bit more warmth and grit, though not signifigantly so. White noise is added simply with a slider. Filter and amp movement are controlled by a single contour generator, so some sounds may be out of the question. This fact may or may not be a big deal to you. The little Rogue came out well before MIDI, but is blessed with a CV in and out. You can also process audio from an external source by plugging into the audio in jack. I have been to afraid to do this though, so I don't know much about it. Sure, there is a lot more that could have gone on this synth, but it is quick and easy to program, cost friendy, and a good way to get some classic Moog sounds without dropping $900 to $1,500 or more.

The Rogue has several sounds that it is very good at making. My favorite is that basic, single oscillator, muted and sustained, glidey lead line sound that has been heard for many years. With a little spring reverb, this sound is very sincere (think the end synth solo of the first song on the Air album Moon Safari). The Rogue also makes good, albeit limited in the controll arena, synced x-mod patches. From sustained buzzy and metallic, to short and "beowwy" sounds, all with very good fidelity. Short, thunky basses are easy to dial in, but don't think you're buying a Taurus pedal. Rogue basses are definetly full, warm and Moog-sounding, but not gobsmackingly heavy. Classic "popcorn" sounds work nice on the Rogue, and with some glide, sound very 70's. The filter can be set to self-oscillate opening up a host of chirpy and whistly options. The famous cascading chirpy sound in the song Frankenstein can be approximated. Overall, this synth has to me a very classic, pre 1980's sound, even though it is from 1981. It just somehow sounds different than say a Jupiter-6 would sound in solo mode. It's quirky, sometimes it does funny things when you play it, and has a particular sound that makes it, although run of the mill at the time, not only a great synth to not only learn on, but a purveyor of some substantial analog synth sounds in today's somewhat sterile digital world. Plus that Moog filter really sounds great! Even on a cheaper instrument like this.

I have only owned this synth for under a year. The only problem I have is the AC jack has come loose from the circuit board. It still works, although I don't unplug the AC adapter from the synthesizer itself anymore. I'm afraid to lose the AC jack to the innards of the keyboard. This is only a minor problem and can be fixed easily. By the way, the oscillators don't seem to drift out of tune as bad as you might think. I tune it once after it warms up for at least ten minutes, and for a couple hours the tuning holds pretty well. I don't know if this varies greatly from model to model. As far as taking it out live, I would and plan to this weekend. Overall a relatively sturdy and stable synth!

I have no idea if any customer support still exists. I doubt it. Moog Music has been through many hands since the original company was founded in the 60's. Most components in the Rogue could probably be replaced by any professional electronics repair shop. I really don't know though.

It's not a Minimoog, or even a Prodigy, but has something very likable about it. It almost looks like an Atari 2600 with a keyboard. If it was stolen or something, I would definetly try and track another down. I also own a Juno-60, Jupiter-6, Korg Poly 800, Oberheim Martrix-6, and a Yamaha CS2X. Live, my buddie and I use the Korg for bass (actually monstrous, try it if you got one), the Rogue for leads, and the CS2X for chords and splits mostly. All I can say is that the Rogue just sounds really upfront compared to the CS2X and the fidelity is for some reason a signifigantly better. The Korg holds its own. If you are looking for a good source of truly recognizable analog sounds and are on a budget, the Rogue is an excellent buy. Sure, it's basic and somewhat limited, but you can really sink your teeth into this little sucker and have some fun.