Taurus pedals
Author: g | 2025-04-24
Taurus Pedals Acid Reflux Delay. Posted By Pedal of the Day on Friday, in Delay / Reverb, Taurus Pedals
Taurus Pedals Archives - Pedal of the Day
As a Moog Rogue on a stick, the Taurus II offered more audio waveforms, oscillator sync and overdrive, as well as pitch modulation, filter modulation and envelope triggering from its multi‑waveform LFO. But to this day, the Taurus II has the unhappy distinction of being the most reviled of all analogue synthesizers. The Rogue has a small band of devoted followers, but players loved to hate the same synth engine in the Taurus II, simply because it didn't generate 'that' sound.By the start of 1983, digital synthesis had arrived, MIDI was just round the corner, and MIDI bass pedals were to appear not long after. The original Moog company ceased trading in 1984, but in 1998, a short‑lived Welsh company (Moog Music Limited) announced the re‑release of the Taurus to accompany its Model 204E recreation of the Minimoog. The pedals never appeared, but shortly thereafter Bob Moog regained the rights to his name in the USA, Moog Music was reborn, the Voyager was announced, and the clamour for Taurus pedals began anew. In the autumn of 2008, Moog Music asked aficionados to put their money where their mouths were and to pay $500 each to fund the development of a limited edition of 1000 units. Many players were willing to do so, and the Taurus 3 was born.An Unusual Playing StyleThe most famous users of Taurus pedals are rooted in the prog‑rock of the late 1970s: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and, most significantly, Mike Rutherford of Genesis, as well as Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush. Later users included Saga, Marillion, Asia, and the Police. But my favourite Taurus player was Steve Hackett's brother John, who played a set with his fists, most notably on 'Clocks' (1979), in which he used one hand to press the pedals, while the other 'played' the octave switch to give the pedals an apparent two‑octave range.It's More Than Just SoundIt's easy to understand why the original Taurus pedals remain so desirable. There's the sound, of course. But just as important, there's the essential 'rightness' of the design, which inserts no impediments between the player and the performance. Big, chunky sliders designed for your oversize wellies, footswitches placed far enough apart so that you don't hit the wrong one on a gloomy stage, and pedals that are easy to play when you're balancing on one leg... all are important factors that helped to make
Taurus Pedals Pi Fuzz - Pedal of the Day
In the presets were not mixed equally, thus allowing the creation of huge, detuned sounds without the depth of phase cancellation (beating) that would have occurred had they been present in equal volumes. Another part of the answer lay in the level of the signal presented to the filter's input. This overdrove the filter, compressing the signal and creating a mild distortion that warms the timbre, much like those glowing bottle thingies that guitarists love so much. Another important characteristic was the low‑frequency boost generated by the coupling between the filter circuit and the audio amplifier. Put all of these characteristics together, play the results through a handful of 18‑inch speakers... and the earth moves.So does the Taurus 3 come up to the mark? To test this, I plugged my original Taurus pedals and the Taurus 3 directly into two Yamaha KA20 100W active speakers sitting alongside one another and started by comparing the three preset sounds that are common to both instruments.'Bass' uses both oscillators, and is quite percussive. The sounds generated by the two instruments proved to be similar, although the Taurus 3 is brighter, whereas the original pedals are undeniably a little fatter. The Taurus 3's 'Tuba' is also a tad brighter than the Taurus's although, by closing the filter a touch, I could make the two sound all but indistinguishable from one another. But what of the fabulous 'Taurus' preset itself? On the Taurus 3, this 'speaks' a little more quickly than on my Taurus pedals, and mine is somewhat nastier (in a good way). There's a snarl in the old girl that is nearly, but not quite, emulated by the young pretender. Would I be able to tell the difference if I was playing either model in isolation? Probably not, and I'm sure that the audience would not.'Taurus III' is a new preset with no equivalent on the original pedals. This is a big, warm, rolling sound that comes with glide switched on by default. Altering the filter cutoff frequency using the foot-wheel allows you to alter this from a short and civilised sound into something sustained, brash and dominating. I'm sure that many players will love it.As for the other 48 sounds, there's no room here to discuss each of them, and some seem to have little purpose other than to demonstrate the Taurus 3's enhanced capabilities. So, for example, the sounds in banksTaurus Pedals Infinity Overdrive - Pedal of the Day
Envisage some owners cutting holes in the wooden side panels to help move it around, so somebody at Moog really should have noticed this and done something about it in the design stages. But, this aside, it looks and feels the business and, once you've managed to move it to the desired position, connecting it up couldn't be easier. Plug in mains power (the PSU is universal, so you don't need to worry about line voltages or frequencies), plug a cable into the audio output, switch it on, and you're ready to go. If you have an urge to do so, you can also connect MIDI via the five‑pin DIN In/Out sockets and USB socket, as well as an analogue Gate plus three CVs to control the pitch, filter cutoff frequency and volume.In its normal mode of operation (which Moog call Preset mode), you can play the pedals as you would expect and edit patches using the facilities provided on the control panel. It's fortunate that the synth engine is so basic, because editing is a bit '1980s', with a 16 x 2-character screen and a single LED bar-graph next to the right‑hand foot-wheel to indicate parameter values.Talking of the foot‑wheels, there are two of these, and both are illuminated for use on gloomy stages. The one on the left is a dedicated volume control but, whereas the equivalent on the Taurus could never reduce the volume to zero, the Taurus 3 wheel can silence it completely, which is not good given that you're going to be controlling it (or mis‑controlling it) with your size 12s. In contrast, the wheel on the right can be assigned all manner of functions and parameters. Using it to control things such as the modulation depth is useful if you've run out of hands, and both the wheel and the Value encoder (the edit knob in the Master section) send MIDI CC messages corresponding to the parameter in focus, which means that you can use them to control other instruments, and even sequence the results.While we're discussing MIDI, it's worth noting that, although the Taurus 3 has a fairly complete MIDI implementation, it has no MIDI Thru socket, although you can echo any MIDI received via the USB socket through the five‑pin DIN 'Out' socket. The incoming MIDI can be merged with any data being generated by the Taurus 3 itself, which, in truth,. Taurus Pedals Acid Reflux Delay. Posted By Pedal of the Day on Friday, in Delay / Reverb, Taurus Pedals Taurus Accessory for cardio training SPD pedals. The Taurus SPD pedals features a click system on one side and normal cup pedals on the other. The Taurus SPD Combi Pedals are suitableMoog Taurus Pedals for sale
Register. This may be a consequence of the age and decrepitude of my Taurus (let's face it... we all tend to get fatter and more authoritative as we get older), but I think that it's more than that. As a knowledgeable friend said when he visited me during the course of this review, the sound of the Taurus 3 proclaims "hey, listen to me… I'm big and fat and authoritative and gorgeous” whereas the original Taurus pedals simply are big and fat and authoritative and gorgeous and didn't give a flying f*** whether you appreciated the difference or not.ConclusionsSome people say that the Mariana Trench is the deepest thing on Earth. Others believe that the teachings of René Descartes ("I drink, therefore I am”) are pretty deep too. But musicians of a certain age will tell you that there's nothing deeper than a set of Taurus pedals. It's not a matter of pitch; there are all manner of synthesizers with oscillators that reach down to subsonic frequencies. It's a matter of authority. A few instruments have it; most do not. Despite the small differences between the new model and the original, the Taurus 3 has it. Sure, it sounds cleaner and more civilised than my 30‑something Taurus pedals, but it nevertheless recreates the restrained snarl and depth of the originals. A worthy successor. The Multiple Births Of The BullIn 1973, Moog Music announced the Constellation, three synthesizers that could be purchased as a "completely co‑ordinated performance ensemble” or as individual instruments. The upper manual was to have been the Lyra monosynth. This never reached production, but was later cut down to become the basis of the Multimoog. The lower manual, called the Apollo, was to have combined preset synthesizer voices with programmable features. The prototype was used by Keith Emerson for ELP's Brain Salad Surgery tour, but also failed to enter production in its original form, reappearing a couple of years later as the Polymoog. The third was a single‑octave bass-pedal unit called the Taurus. Again, this never reached manufacture in its original form, but the name, as well as the concept, survived, and the redesigned Taurus pedals sold in small numbers for five years from 1976 onward.In 1981, Norlin Music replaced the Taurus with the Taurus II, comprising a wider pedalboard and a separate sound generator that could be mounted on a pole at waist height. Described by manyMoog Taurus Pedals - Rush.com
The Taurus pedals what they were.SpecificationsPolyphony: one note (13 notes over MIDI)Oscillators: two.Waveforms: one (sawtooth).Filter: 24dB/oct resonant low‑pass.Filter contour: AD.Amplifier contour: ASR.LFO: one.LFO waveforms: four.LFO range: 0.1-100Hz.LFO destinations: two (oscillator pitch, filter cutoff frequency).Pedalboard: 13 keys, C-C.Note range (pedals): 24-60 (three octaves down from middle C).Note range (MIDI): 0-60 (five octaves down from middle C).Velocity sensitivity: Over MIDI only.Controllers: two (one volume, one assignable).Audio output: Single channel, quarter‑inch high‑Z and low‑Z outputs provided.Analogue control inputs: four (pitch, filter cutoff frequency, volume, gate).Digital control: MIDI Input/Output (five‑pin DIN connector and USB), channels 1-16.Power supply: 90-250V, 50/60Hz.ProsA faithful homage to the original Taurus, both physically and sonically.Easy to control with your feet in live situations.Lots of analogue and MIDI control.ConsIt's unwieldy and can be difficult to move.There's a bug in the arpeggiator.At over two grand, it's not cheap.SummaryIf ever a synthesizer was bought for just one purpose, it was the Moog Taurus, whose eponymous preset helped to define the sound of the late '70s. The Taurus 3 is a genuine successor to the original, with a similar look and feel but, most importantly, much of the depth and power that has eluded most (if not all) other bass synthesizers. If you've been waiting for an affordable set of second‑hand Taurus pedals to appear, try the Taurus 3.informationPoor man's Taurus pedals?
The Moog Taurus pedal is an analog synthesizer that is played with your feet. It helps fill out the song your playing with that real church pipe organ/deep base register sound. The best example of this sound is when The Police used this pedal at the beginning of Don’t stand so close to me. This ancient, blast for the past, is precisely what your looking for, if you want that little extra something for your sound!If you’ve ever seen a church organ up close or in pictures, then you may have a better idea of what this instrument looks like. Hey, if you ever went to someone’s home and they had one of those ‘ol cheezy home organs, then you’d have a good idea as well! The Moog Taurus pedal looks exactly like the pedals at the bottom of these organs. You play it with you feet!The Moog Taurus Pedal has been around for ages. Bands that have or had them in their musical arsenal are bands like RUSH, YES, Pink Floyd, the Police and many other rock, fusion and metal performers from yesterday, right up to the present day scene!The thing that got me thinking of this was while playing with CounterPoint the other night. Chris Noto, the best bass player that I have ever had the privilege of playing with, brought it up while taking a break. He said his brother has one and that he’d love to get it from him if he could, and believe you me, this guy REALLY knows what he is talking about. The way this guy plays the bass, if he had one of these things, it would sound like he is playing 3 instruments at once! Just imagine what it could do with your sound.So check out the links on this page and learn for yourself what this could do for your band’s sound.Keep on Jammin’ -->. Taurus Pedals Acid Reflux Delay. Posted By Pedal of the Day on Friday, in Delay / Reverb, Taurus Pedals Taurus Accessory for cardio training SPD pedals. The Taurus SPD pedals features a click system on one side and normal cup pedals on the other. The Taurus SPD Combi Pedals are suitableComments
As a Moog Rogue on a stick, the Taurus II offered more audio waveforms, oscillator sync and overdrive, as well as pitch modulation, filter modulation and envelope triggering from its multi‑waveform LFO. But to this day, the Taurus II has the unhappy distinction of being the most reviled of all analogue synthesizers. The Rogue has a small band of devoted followers, but players loved to hate the same synth engine in the Taurus II, simply because it didn't generate 'that' sound.By the start of 1983, digital synthesis had arrived, MIDI was just round the corner, and MIDI bass pedals were to appear not long after. The original Moog company ceased trading in 1984, but in 1998, a short‑lived Welsh company (Moog Music Limited) announced the re‑release of the Taurus to accompany its Model 204E recreation of the Minimoog. The pedals never appeared, but shortly thereafter Bob Moog regained the rights to his name in the USA, Moog Music was reborn, the Voyager was announced, and the clamour for Taurus pedals began anew. In the autumn of 2008, Moog Music asked aficionados to put their money where their mouths were and to pay $500 each to fund the development of a limited edition of 1000 units. Many players were willing to do so, and the Taurus 3 was born.An Unusual Playing StyleThe most famous users of Taurus pedals are rooted in the prog‑rock of the late 1970s: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and, most significantly, Mike Rutherford of Genesis, as well as Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush. Later users included Saga, Marillion, Asia, and the Police. But my favourite Taurus player was Steve Hackett's brother John, who played a set with his fists, most notably on 'Clocks' (1979), in which he used one hand to press the pedals, while the other 'played' the octave switch to give the pedals an apparent two‑octave range.It's More Than Just SoundIt's easy to understand why the original Taurus pedals remain so desirable. There's the sound, of course. But just as important, there's the essential 'rightness' of the design, which inserts no impediments between the player and the performance. Big, chunky sliders designed for your oversize wellies, footswitches placed far enough apart so that you don't hit the wrong one on a gloomy stage, and pedals that are easy to play when you're balancing on one leg... all are important factors that helped to make
2025-04-13In the presets were not mixed equally, thus allowing the creation of huge, detuned sounds without the depth of phase cancellation (beating) that would have occurred had they been present in equal volumes. Another part of the answer lay in the level of the signal presented to the filter's input. This overdrove the filter, compressing the signal and creating a mild distortion that warms the timbre, much like those glowing bottle thingies that guitarists love so much. Another important characteristic was the low‑frequency boost generated by the coupling between the filter circuit and the audio amplifier. Put all of these characteristics together, play the results through a handful of 18‑inch speakers... and the earth moves.So does the Taurus 3 come up to the mark? To test this, I plugged my original Taurus pedals and the Taurus 3 directly into two Yamaha KA20 100W active speakers sitting alongside one another and started by comparing the three preset sounds that are common to both instruments.'Bass' uses both oscillators, and is quite percussive. The sounds generated by the two instruments proved to be similar, although the Taurus 3 is brighter, whereas the original pedals are undeniably a little fatter. The Taurus 3's 'Tuba' is also a tad brighter than the Taurus's although, by closing the filter a touch, I could make the two sound all but indistinguishable from one another. But what of the fabulous 'Taurus' preset itself? On the Taurus 3, this 'speaks' a little more quickly than on my Taurus pedals, and mine is somewhat nastier (in a good way). There's a snarl in the old girl that is nearly, but not quite, emulated by the young pretender. Would I be able to tell the difference if I was playing either model in isolation? Probably not, and I'm sure that the audience would not.'Taurus III' is a new preset with no equivalent on the original pedals. This is a big, warm, rolling sound that comes with glide switched on by default. Altering the filter cutoff frequency using the foot-wheel allows you to alter this from a short and civilised sound into something sustained, brash and dominating. I'm sure that many players will love it.As for the other 48 sounds, there's no room here to discuss each of them, and some seem to have little purpose other than to demonstrate the Taurus 3's enhanced capabilities. So, for example, the sounds in banks
2025-03-26Register. This may be a consequence of the age and decrepitude of my Taurus (let's face it... we all tend to get fatter and more authoritative as we get older), but I think that it's more than that. As a knowledgeable friend said when he visited me during the course of this review, the sound of the Taurus 3 proclaims "hey, listen to me… I'm big and fat and authoritative and gorgeous” whereas the original Taurus pedals simply are big and fat and authoritative and gorgeous and didn't give a flying f*** whether you appreciated the difference or not.ConclusionsSome people say that the Mariana Trench is the deepest thing on Earth. Others believe that the teachings of René Descartes ("I drink, therefore I am”) are pretty deep too. But musicians of a certain age will tell you that there's nothing deeper than a set of Taurus pedals. It's not a matter of pitch; there are all manner of synthesizers with oscillators that reach down to subsonic frequencies. It's a matter of authority. A few instruments have it; most do not. Despite the small differences between the new model and the original, the Taurus 3 has it. Sure, it sounds cleaner and more civilised than my 30‑something Taurus pedals, but it nevertheless recreates the restrained snarl and depth of the originals. A worthy successor. The Multiple Births Of The BullIn 1973, Moog Music announced the Constellation, three synthesizers that could be purchased as a "completely co‑ordinated performance ensemble” or as individual instruments. The upper manual was to have been the Lyra monosynth. This never reached production, but was later cut down to become the basis of the Multimoog. The lower manual, called the Apollo, was to have combined preset synthesizer voices with programmable features. The prototype was used by Keith Emerson for ELP's Brain Salad Surgery tour, but also failed to enter production in its original form, reappearing a couple of years later as the Polymoog. The third was a single‑octave bass-pedal unit called the Taurus. Again, this never reached manufacture in its original form, but the name, as well as the concept, survived, and the redesigned Taurus pedals sold in small numbers for five years from 1976 onward.In 1981, Norlin Music replaced the Taurus with the Taurus II, comprising a wider pedalboard and a separate sound generator that could be mounted on a pole at waist height. Described by many
2025-04-01The Taurus pedals what they were.SpecificationsPolyphony: one note (13 notes over MIDI)Oscillators: two.Waveforms: one (sawtooth).Filter: 24dB/oct resonant low‑pass.Filter contour: AD.Amplifier contour: ASR.LFO: one.LFO waveforms: four.LFO range: 0.1-100Hz.LFO destinations: two (oscillator pitch, filter cutoff frequency).Pedalboard: 13 keys, C-C.Note range (pedals): 24-60 (three octaves down from middle C).Note range (MIDI): 0-60 (five octaves down from middle C).Velocity sensitivity: Over MIDI only.Controllers: two (one volume, one assignable).Audio output: Single channel, quarter‑inch high‑Z and low‑Z outputs provided.Analogue control inputs: four (pitch, filter cutoff frequency, volume, gate).Digital control: MIDI Input/Output (five‑pin DIN connector and USB), channels 1-16.Power supply: 90-250V, 50/60Hz.ProsA faithful homage to the original Taurus, both physically and sonically.Easy to control with your feet in live situations.Lots of analogue and MIDI control.ConsIt's unwieldy and can be difficult to move.There's a bug in the arpeggiator.At over two grand, it's not cheap.SummaryIf ever a synthesizer was bought for just one purpose, it was the Moog Taurus, whose eponymous preset helped to define the sound of the late '70s. The Taurus 3 is a genuine successor to the original, with a similar look and feel but, most importantly, much of the depth and power that has eluded most (if not all) other bass synthesizers. If you've been waiting for an affordable set of second‑hand Taurus pedals to appear, try the Taurus 3.information
2025-04-15D and E demonstrate the effect of directing the LFO to the filter, Bank G contains arpeggiated patches, bank J demonstrates some lead‑synth sounds at the top of the instrument's range, and bank L concentrates on patches with high levels of filter resonance. But my favourites are more quotidian. 'Growl Bass' is like a more subdued version of the original Taurus preset, while 'Fretlessish' is muted and uses the LFO and glide to create a sound that could never have been obtained from the original. Finally, there's a classic patch that I have been creating for sound libraries and using for three decades. Much like the Taurus preset itself, but with a large amount of filter resonance, it's a marvellous deep, sweeping bass sound. And its name? Well... it's 'Gordon'. No, it couldn't be, could it?To Buy Or Not To Buy? Vintage Taurus pedals are now exceedingly rare. What is even rarer is a set that works properly. The most common fault is that of dirty, damaged or corroded pedal contacts, resulting in mis‑triggering, lost notes, or even silence from every note above the damaged one. They could also be prone to power-supply faults, resulting in all manner of calibration issues, and failing trimmers caused tuning problems. Physically, they were prone to losing their control-panel covers and bezels (thus admitting all manner of crap into the body of the synth itself), and broken keys were almost guaranteed on any set taken out of the studio. So until recently, the question was, "should I wait in the hope that a decent set of Taurus pedals appear, or should I use a set of MIDI pedals and hook them up to a sound source of some kind?” (I recently programmed a patch on Propellerhead's Thor synth that is remarkably close to the real thing; played from my Korg MPK130 MIDI bass pedals it even feels good, and I have no doubt that the audience are unaware of the deceit being perpetrated upon them.)But today, the question has changed. Ignoring the cost, it's simply, "does the new Taurus model nail the sound of the original?”. With the two sitting next to one another, their sounds can be almost identical, and I would have no hesitation in using the Taurus 3 live or in the studio. But if you're a dyed‑in‑the‑wool Taurus fanatic, there's still a small but indefinable difference, especially in the lowest
2025-03-30The resurrection of Moog's stellar bass synth has caused a considerable stir. Can the Taurus 3 live up to the venerable reputation of its ancestor?Taurus bass pedals are perhaps the finest demonstration in the synthesizer world of the fact that it is better to do one thing extremely well than it is to do lots of things quite well. With just a single octave of pedals, three hard‑wired bass sounds and a single 'Variable' patch that you can adjust using their mere 13 voicing controls, they were used by almost everyone to produce just one sound, still known universally as 'the Taurus'.Today, the Taurus 3 is the grandchild of the Taurus, and its designers have been wise not to tinker too much with the iconic look or feel of the original. Sure, there are two extra footswitches, the pedals are slightly longer than before, the chunky volume and filter sliders have been replaced by wheels, and the control panel is more complex, but there's much here to suggest that the new product has been designed to slot in precisely where the old one did.Homage, Copy Or Something Different?Although Moog Music claim that the voicing circuitry in the Taurus 3 is copied slavishly from the original, I'm not sure how true this can be. Some of the original components are no longer available, and certain circuit designs were adopted in 1976 because there were no modulation sources in the original. This, as you will see, is no longer the case. Similarly, the inclusion of a pitch-calibration procedure but no filter-calibration procedure hints at things decidedly non‑'70s in the Taurus 3's architecture. Happily, the new model has retained many of the limitations that helped to define the character of the original. So, for example, there are no audio waveform controls, no cross‑modulation, no sync... Each of the two oscillators generates nothing more than a distorted sawtooth wave. As on the original, you can adjust the oscillator mix and alter the tuning of Osc B with respect to Osc A, to obtain the wonderful fat sounds that are the bedrock of the Taurus's appeal, but that's it. Likewise, the original configuration of the Taurus's VCA and its sluggish AR contour generator have been retained, with the (still misnamed) Decay button determining whether the release stage is active or not.The Taurus's front panel controls, bookended by the large volume and control foot‑wheels.The Taurus 3's
2025-04-04