MOOG TAURUS
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| Monophonic 2 VCO analog bass synth - Released in 1975 |
Yes, this is the original Moog Taurus bass pedal synth! I had the priviledge to borrow friend's Taurus and I used it on my album Orion. I especially composed one song Taurus in my mind and then recorded the bass parts in one session.
The taurus is a very solid and fat sounding monophonic bass synthesizer. It's designed to be controlled with your feet to leave your hands free to play the Minimoog and a Mellotron if you wish. I operated it with my hands, however, because I didn't want to kick this valuable vintage piece of kit.
It has three presets - Bass, Tuba and you guessed it - Taurus! Then, fortunately there's also the chance to make your own sound when toggling the variable setting. The variables are located under a small lid where you have a coulpe of sliders to adjust the sound. There are also huge sliders on top of the synth for adjusting loudness and filter cutoff.
The sound is quaranteed Moog-quality, very strong bass. I compared the Taurus directly to my bass monster synth, the Roland RS-505 Paraphonic (which has a monophonic bass sound too), and the result in my opinion was that the RS-505 was even huger and bigger than the Taurus, even without the stereo ensemble effect. But the Taurus is slightly more versatile with the sound adjusting controls. They both deliver some of the best analog bass goodness!
