Taurus pedals

Is there anything out there like these things anymore? How can I get that sound? ANy ideas?

Didn't Geddy Lee from Rush use those? He's probably replaced them with something current - look up his rig

These come close for a much lower cost I think.

http://www.basyn.com/

Interesting. They seem to be using HAPP Controls arcade buttons. I wonder how they hold up to dirty shoes pressing on them. At least they can be replaced for about $3 each.

If they put that in a rack mount at around the same price everyone would own one.

Buy a Moog synth and hook up pedals to them ala Studiologic or Pk-5s or whatever.

What Moog synth? I own a set of Taurus and just about every desireable vintage moog and nothing has that beefy bass end of the Taurus. Not even the Voyager. Have yet to try the Phatty though.

Try Clavia's free Nord Modular G2 this patch...

Quote by The Real MC:

"What Moog synth? I own a set of Taurus and just about every desireable vintage moog and nothing has that beefy bass end of the Taurus. Not even the Voyager. Have yet to try the Phatty though".

I owned a set of Taurus I pedals for years, and I was able to get basically the same sound out of my Moog Source, which I still have. The synth in the Taurus pedals was a pretty standard synth setup for the time period they were made, as was the Moog Source.

Obvously, there are things that are different in the sound from one synth mfg to another, so recreating the EXACT sound from another company is always a challenge. I have spent a lot of time trying to get a close approximation of patch 21 on my Prophet 5 (Lead synth sound with a GREAT filter sweep) on my Alesis ION. I can get a very similar tone, but where the 2 synths really differ is in the filters. The Prophet's single filter trumps anything or any combination of filters on the ION. VA's are good, but RA's still have the edge.

I suppose 98% close isn't good enough.

Mike T.

I also own a Source and that does the best approximation. It nails the purr of the Taurus, but misses out on that low end oomph. I did an A/B test on my PA system which has really good subs to exploit the Taurus pedals.

Yup. It was pretty cool seeing Rush in the old days, those three boys made a lotta sound. Today the shows are done with a sequencer/PT setup. I remember the song in particular with the female voice-Time Stand Still. Pretty cheezy in concert to have a voice on a tape. Likewise, the string section on Manhattan project sounds kinda lame coming out of nowhere.

Quote by MRCPro:

"I also own a Source and that does the best approximation. It nails the purr of the Taurus, but misses out on that low end oomph. I did an A/B test on my PA system which has really good subs to exploit the Taurus pedals".

Didn't Moog use the same Oscillators and Filters in both synths? I know Moog also had a lower priced synth on the market at the time (can't remember the model name anymore) and that too (supposedly) had the same OSC and Filters.

Mike T.

People have done side-by-side comparisons between Taurus Mark I's and various Moogs and the consensus is that the Taurus has a certain "something", a bass boost built in to the circuits, that give it the unique huge bass sound.

I've got some nice Mark I samples.When I fire them up and compare them to VSTis that claim to nail the Taurus sound, my analog synth or anything else I've tried, the Taurus samples just produce a bigger,beefier sound with powerful low-end fundamentals. It really is a unique sound, not just a repackaged Moog source or modified Mini.

The front panel controls on the Taurus 1 were pretty simple, I didn't see any way to control that "oomph" we're talking about. Where/how in the circuitry was it built in?

Mike T.

Nice discussion guys. I wish I owned those original Taurus pedals, along with a Source, but no, not me...

Strange, Rush's gear list on their sites make no mention of any synths; pedals or keys! Weak. The drummer has an XV5080 though

Sorry MRCPro, snafu on my part, I meant The Real MC. Everybody knows who he is!

Mike T.

It's in the AC coupling between the VCF and the VCA, there's no control for it. The AC coupling provides a slight bass boost around 20hz corner frequency. The service manual reveals this secret to the "oomph". But using a bass boost via EQ doesn't provide the same effect - because the bass boost takes place in the feedback loop of the VCF, it provides a different response than an EQ boost.

The other secret to the "oomph" is that the VCOs are overdriving the filter harder than most Moog synths. That's one of the reasons the bass sound out of the Taurus is so solid. Since the Phatty has an "overdrive" control, I'm curious how well it emulates the Taurus.

Bob told me that the filter for the Taurus was a direct descendent of the famous 904 lowpass filter module from the Moog modulars. However I have studied the filter circuits of most of the moog synths and have found that the feedback topology is different in each one. Feedback has a significant impact on the sonority of a circuit than most engineers admit or know of. The current off the top of the differential ladders of the filter has to be buffered - which is the feedback circuit - and every different moog model has a different buffer circuit. Whether the buffer consist of bipolar transistors, FET transistors, CA3080 OTA, opamps - all these change the sound of the filter. The Taurus filter is unique, especially how it is AC coupled to the VCA. Even though the Source filter is a different design, it has the closest emulation of the Taurus.

The Taurus VCOs are also unique - that design does not exist in any other model.

I have a web page of the Taurus pedals, with mp3s of its sound.

Great Stuff MC!

It sounds like you spent quite a bit of time getting into the design of Moog synths. I had thought that the Moog Prodigy or Rogue had shared some of the same components as the Taurus 1 pedals, but obviously, that was hearsay.

I sold my Taurus I pedals about a year and a half ago to a collector.

Mike T.

Yup. It was pretty cool seeing Rush in the old days, those three boys made a lotta sound. Today the shows are done with a sequencer/PT setup. I remember the song in particular with the female voice-Time Stand Still. Pretty cheezy in concert to have a voice on a tape. Likewise, the string section on Manhattan project sounds kinda lame coming out of nowhere.

Yeah...

I remember from the Roll The Bones tour that the string/choir arrangements(The Big Money, Manhattan Project, Force Ten, etc...) were sampled and they were triggered from Neil Peart's kit.

That's some excellent info you have on that page. A much better job of explaining the bass boost than other stuff I've read.

It's too bad you've never seen Genesis live. It is the Taurus' finest moment.At one concert, when the low C has held for about 20-30 seconds during Afterglow, a 60,000 seat stadium shook. I mean earthquake shook. It was the most powerful sound I have ever heard in my life.

Maybe you can catch Genesis this summer. Too bad the ticket prices are insane.

The filter overdrive on the Phatty uses a feedback loop if I'm not mistaken. IMO it has plenty of low-end oomph (I love the word oomph ) but I haven't played Taurus pedals (heard them plenty,) but without having played them I couldn't tell you if the LP can provide the exact same oomph or not.

One plus is that you can raise this by patching the output back into the input, and overdrive it some more. Perhaps some combination of the two could achieve this.

I have an old Electro-Harmonix Mini synthesizer and it comes closer to nailing the Taurus bass sound than anything I've heard. Think of Van Halen's "Sunday Afternoon in the Park" without the filter sweeps. Pretty cool.

Sad thing is, it would probably be harder to find an EH Mini than Taurus pedals.

Yeah I was looking at that basyn. Not a bad price neither.