Moog Messenger

There are few brands so widely loved as Moog, and as the company changes hands many will be asking what the future holds. Well, we’re about to find out...

I’m old enough to remember when Moog synthesizers required a minimum of two people to lift them. Then the ’70s arrived, and things became altogether more practical with the release of the Minimoog. Despite being much smaller and lighter than its modular ancestors, this shared a characteristic that epitomised the company’s products in their heyday: they had heft. If you threw one at a guitarist (and, let’s face it, who didn’t in the 1970s?) you were liable to do serious damage, primarily to the guitarist. Later on, Moog dabbled with lightweight construction. The Polymoog was so twisty that you could almost tie it in a bow, and several of the company’s subsequent keyboards eschewed wood and steel for plastic. But when Bob Moog reacquired the rights to his name, the synthesizers produced by the reborn Moog Music were again solid and weighty. Even before switching one on, you felt proud to find yourself standing behind a Voyager, a Moog One or, of course, the re‑released modulars.

However, the Moog Music of 2025 isn’t the same beast as the Moog Music of 1972 or 2002, or even that of 2022. The recent acquisition by InMusic sent shockwaves through the bedroom studios of Moog aficionados, and even more deeply through Moog itself as manufacturing was moved out of the USA. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with designing products in the West and manufacturing them in the East. This has been the bedrock of many companies’ business models for decades but, while calm heads accepted that Moog may have had no alternative if they were to survive, concerns were raised about the future of the brand. Would their products still be perceived as high‑end or would InMusic sacrifice Moog’s reputation in order to bring cheaper products more quickly to the market?

Hail The Messenger

The first keyboard instrument to appear following the acquisition was the chunky, Moog One‑inspired Muse polysynth, which I reviewed in Sound On Sound in September 2024. But to cite this as the progeny of the Moog/InMusic marriage would be misleading. The Muse was nearing the end of its development before InMusic moved in and, although late changes were made, I think that it’s more accurate to describe it as the last product of the outgoing dynasty, not the first of the new. But today I have in front of me what is clearly the first instrument of the new era.

Based upon a plastic chassis and a metal fascia, the Messenger is not hefty. It’s a small, Chinese‑manufactured monosynth with an analogue signal path, digital modulation, plus an arpeggiator and a sequencer. It has a short (32‑note) keyboard which is both velocity‑ and aftertouch‑sensitive, and its pitch‑bend and modulation wheels are positioned where they should be. There’s no display and, therefore, there are no menus but, as I was soon to discover, this doesn’t simplify the synth. In contrast, it makes configuration, programming, and the saving and recalling of patches considerably more difficult than they would otherwise be. But let’s return to this later, and start by looking at the Messenger’s sound engine to try to decide whether this is an evolution of Moog’s synthesis, or something (for better or worse) that’s new and different.

Oscillators, Mixer & Filter

Significant differences between the Messenger and many traditional Moog monosynths appear right at the start of the signal path. All the usual waveforms and their in‑betweeny shapes are available from the dual oscillators in a smooth clockwise morph from triangle through sawtooth to square and pulse, but if you turn an oscillator’s wave shape knob anticlockwise from the triangle position, you enter the domain of triangle wave‑folding, which leads to all manner of bright and interesting tones. Instead of traditional pulse‑width modulation, the Messenger then offers wave modulation, which can create a far greater range of timbres than before. Hard sync is also provided, which allows you to generate the usual tones and sweeps. There’s also 2‑op FM (cross‑modulation) that generates somewhat unpredictable results, as is usual when employing VCOs rather than DCOs or digital oscillators as the operators.

The tuning configuration is also unusual. Where you might expect to find a tuning knob for osc 1, you’ll find the master tune for the entire synth. The tuning knob for osc 2 is then implemented as an offset from this. Until you get used to it, you’ll find it mighty strange to be changing the pitch of osc 2 when you think that you’re tuning osc 1.

The final audio source in this section is a sub‑oscillator derived from osc 1, with wave shapes ranging in another smooth morph from triangle through square to narrow pulse waves, with wave modulation when desired.

The outputs from the oscillator section plus a noise generator are then mixed and passed to the filter. Unlike some recent Moog monosynths, there’s no intentional overdrive in the mixer — most of the time, if you turn something up, you simply obtain a louder something. Nevertheless, it’s possible to overdrive the filter itself. Indeed, the first knob in the filter section is marked FB/Ext In and, with no cable inserted into the Ext In socket, this controls the gain of a Minimoog‑inspired feedback loop. You can also perform the Minimoog trick in the original way if you use a cable to route the output of the synth back into the external input. If you want to generate the uncontrollable howls of anguished analogue components, this is where you go about doing so.

Unlike traditional Moogs, the Messenger’s filter offers four profiles: 12dB/oct and 24dB/oct low‑pass, plus 12dB/oct (each side) band‑pass and 24dB/oct high‑pass. It’s resonant in all of these modes, and will oscillate if you wind the resonance knob above two o’clock or thereabouts. In addition, you can modulate its cutoff frequency at audio rates using osc 2 for all manner of interesting effects. But this is also where you’ll find one of, if not the most valuable of the Messenger’s additional capabilities: a bass compensation mode that allows bass frequencies to pass unattenuated when you increase the resonance. This means that, at the press of a button, it can stray into the sonic realms occupied by some Oberheim, Roland and Yamaha synths. There are even sweet spots where the output is considerably more complex and involving than just ‘the resonant sound with the bass retained’. I can’t emphasise enough how valuable this is, and many of the Messenger’s best sounds would be impossible without it.

Contours & Modulation

Shaping is provided by two digitally‑generated, loopable ADSR contour generators, one directed by default to the filter cutoff frequency, to osc 2’s frequency and wave shape, and to the sub‑oscillator wave shape, and the other to the audio amplifier’s gain. The amplitude of each is independently velocity‑sensitive, and a global multi‑triggering option is provided. You can also direct each contour to a single, secondary destination. Any parameter controlled by a knob on the top panel is a legitimate target.

There are two LFOs. The first offers four waveforms, a default rate of up to 12Hz (but which you can program for a maximum of 1.2kHz), depth, clock sync, key sync, fade‑in or fade‑out. However, there are only four obvious destinations — the filter cutoff frequency, the osc 1 waveform, the osc 2 frequency and the sub‑oscillator waveform — only one of which can be selected in a given patch. However, you can again program a second destination and, as before, any parameter controlled by a knob can be chosen.

Found on the performance panel to the left of the keyboard itself, LFO 2 appears to be even more limited, and is. It generates a triangle wave with a rate of up to 12Hz, and its depth is determined only by the modulation wheel unless you assign another control to modulate the virtual position of the wheel. It has three destinations — master tuning (vibrato), filter cutoff frequency (wow), and audio amplifier gain (tremolo) — and you can direct it to any combination of these. It has no secondary assignment.

Arpeggiator & Sequencer

The arpeggiator is flexible, but you can only program and manipulate it using the Advanced Configuration Settings, about which I shall talk in a moment. It offers standard fare such as latch, tempo and gate length, but no fewer than 13 patterns and 10 arpeggio modes (covering up to four octaves of playback) that can interact in interesting ways to create unusual patterns. The transposable, 64‑step sequencer also offers a host of possibilities. In addition to the usual note recording, rests, ties and slides, it offers a single channel of parameter recording that (amongst other things) allows you to generate accents by programming the filter cutoff frequency or the mixer level appropriately on given steps. Less common facilities include a Note Pool of up to 16 notes that are drawn upon depending upon the Note Probability — that is, the probability of playing the sequenced note on a given step or not. There’s also Gate Probability, which determines the chance of a gate being generated on a given step or not. The possibilities are intriguing, but I’m a deterministic kinda guy rather than a serendipitous one, so it’s not designed for the likes of me. What’s more, I find the setup and programming system to be unintuitive, so it’s unlikely that I’ll ever get the best from it. Others, of course, may love it.

Unfortunately, arpeggios and sequences are saved on a per‑patch basis rather than into a memory bank that you can draw upon when creating a new sound. I think that this is a mistake. There will be many occasions when you want to experiment by attaching this sequence to that sound, and I can’t see that this is possible.

The Messenger measures 585 x 322 x 96mm and weighs in at 4.95kg.

Shoot The Messenger

Despite its ‘metal fascia, plastic chassis’ approach, the Messenger feels sturdy, and the knobs and wheels are solid. Indeed, the build quality feels excellent, although guitarists will feel safer if I bring one of these to rehearsals rather than a Minimoog. Nevertheless, I can’t say that I’m a fan of the keyboard itself. I’m not referring to its length, although it’s been 40 years since I willingly played a monosynth with just 32 keys, and I’m not suggesting that it’s flimsy; the keys are some of the most robust that I’ve encountered on an unweighted keyboard. I just don’t like the feel. The keys are heavily sprung and push back in a way that doesn’t work for me, especially with rapid playing. With any luck, the action will ease with use, leaving it simultaneously robust and pleasant to play. In the meantime, playing it from a 61‑key or even 76‑key controller proved to be a much more pleasant experience and made it far more useful for a practitioner of the dark arts of widdly‑widdly. Nevertheless, how one perceives the ‘feel’ of a keyboard is a personal judgment so, again, you may be far happier with it than I was.

My other area of concern lies in programming the bloody thing. The first, if insignificant, indication that something weird was going on was when I first put the Messenger on a stand and noticed that some of its knobs are encircled with a white line while others are not. I’ve tried to work out whether there’s a consistent philosophy behind this, and still can’t discern one. (No doubt I’ll feel very stupid when someone explains it to me.)

Trivia aside, genuine impediments started to become apparent when I tried to direct the contours to secondary destinations. Since there’s no screen and there are no dedicated buttons for doing this, you have to hold down the appropriate Loop button (which doubles as a ‘please initiate secondary assignment’ button), then turn the knob of the parameter to which you wish to direct the contour, and then turn the same knob (or the tempo knob, or press one of the 16 PGM buttons that run behind the keyboard) to determine the modulation depth, which is then displayed in a coarse fashion using the lights behind the same buttons. You then need to release the mechanism (I got into the habit of pressing the Patch button) or the next knob you turn will become the revised destination and you’ll have lost what you set out to achieve. Moog calls this Quick Assign, but I find it clunky because there’s no way to see what’s directed to where or by how much once you’ve programmed it.

A similar mechanism is used to program the secondary destinations for the keyboard tracking, LFO 1, and the four modulation sources that are only available from the PGM buttons: sample & hold (which, by the way, hasn’t been blessed with its own clock) and the destinations for velocity, aftertouch and the expression pedal. But then things start to become even more impenetrable...

The Messenger has many parameters (including the portamento, pitch‑bend ranges, the LFO ranges, the contour modes, as well as the arpeggiator and sequencer modes) that can only be programmed using the PGM buttons. And if you want to configure underlying features, things get even nastier. To access and program one of these, you must press the Settings button, then the Config button, then (possibly) the page button to access the group of settings that you want. You then have to press the button underneath which the wanted parameter resides, and then another to determine the wanted value. Since none of this is annotated on the panel, it will be impossible to leave home without a printout of the manual or, at the very least, an extensive crib‑sheet. But even these won’t help you if you recall and try to edit an existing patch because there’s no indication whatsoever regarding existing modulation routings or depths. This makes it a horrendous job (indeed, it can be almost impossible) to try to work out why your sound and any subsequent editing isn’t producing the results that you expect.

The designers may have implemented this programming system to save the cost of a small screen and its associated navigation buttons, but I have a nasty feeling that they may have done it to make the Messenger appear more analogue, even though these functions are clearly digital. Either way, I think that they got it wrong. Either keep things simple and implement a WYSIWYG panel, or have lots of facilities and include a screen. Don’t make it complex and leave out the screen — that’s the worst possible combination.

As for the manual itself, I’m afraid that I find this to be deficient too. There are lots of powerful features in the Messenger that deserve further explanations, but don’t get them. In addition, there are errors (for example, the clock division table appears to be described backwards) so I would exhort Moog to spend some more time on this to make it a more substantial and useful document. I realise that most owners will never read the manual no matter how long or how short it is but, for those of us who want to understand the synth fully, it would be a welcome improvement.

Don’t Shoot The Messenger

Given the above, I was not a fan when I first set up and configured the Messenger, but not just because of its programming system. I could live with the short keybed with its unusual action as well as the lack of effects — after all, you don’t buy a Renault Clio and then complain that it’s smaller and has fewer features than an Audi A8 — but, when I started to play, there seemed to me to be something a little bit brash about it. In some poorly defined way, it didn’t feel Moog‑y to me. Inspecting its output on an oscilloscope confirmed what my ears were telling me; while the triangle wave is remarkably triangular for an analogue synth, the sawtooth and pulse waves contain excess high‑frequency content that makes them brighter than I had expected.

The turning point in our relationship occurred after I had created my own initial patch with nothing doing anything to anything else, and was experimenting with the sub‑oscillator alone, applying a little PWM to the initial wave and shaping the results using the 24dB/oct low‑pass filter mode. All was going well and then... Holy moly! A set of Taurus pedals jumped out of my speakers and narrowly missed my foot. Suddenly it was clear that the depth and warmth I had been seeking were in there waiting to be discovered, but perhaps obscured by all of the wave shaping, additional filter profiles and modulation options.

From that moment on, it was all upward, with some great lead sounds, powerful basses, ’70s orchestral emulations, some excellent vocal(‑ish) timbres, attention‑grabbing sound effects, interesting arpeggios and more. For me, the trick was always to start with my initial patch and then aim for what I wanted, concentrating on simplicity rather than becoming distracted by all of the possibilities on offer. When I took a single oscillator producing a triangle wave, added a little feedback and filtered the result, applied a little pitch modulation and then passed the output through a Space Echo... ooh, that could be lovely!

But eventually I decided to delve more deeply and discovered a wealth of unexpected stuff including sounds that imitated a TB‑303 (or, at least, one of its clones), emulated various non‑Moog vintage synths and, courtesy of its wave‑folding, even trod on the toes of Arturia’s Brutes. You want smooth? It will do smooth. You want gnarly? It will do that too, and the tortured wail that made me want to run out of the studio might be exactly what you’re looking for. It’s quite possible that you’re going to obtain sounds from the Messenger that you haven’t heard before, and I doubt that you’ll regret overwriting any of the factory sounds to store your own. Mind you, you’ll need a large piece of paper and a pen to keep track of everything. No screen means no patch names, nor even any patch numbers! With up to 256 of your own sounds on board, this reinforces my view that the omission of a screen was a poor decision.

If there’s a sonic (rather than an operational) caveat, it’s the gentle halo of broadband noise that surrounds the Messenger’s sounds. It’s all but inaudible with many patches, but I’m a bit sensitive about such things, and there were times when I felt that I had to increase the wanted signal level so that I could push the noise down. Having said all of that, you might feel that a bit of whoosh adds character to your sounds. The choice is yours.

For years, nostalgia has played as large a part in the sales of Moog’s synthesizers as their sounds and capabilities, so I’m pleased to see that the Messenger seeks to marry the company’s classic sound with the innovations that will move it into the future.

Conclusion

For years, nostalgia has played as large a part in the sales of Moog’s synthesizers as their sounds and capabilities, so I’m pleased to see that the Messenger seeks to marry the company’s classic sound with the innovations that will move it into the future. At the price, it’s not bad value either and, while it’s more affordable than its predecessors, there’s nothing that should stop you feeling proud to stand behind one.

Nonetheless, I’m at a loss to decide whether I love it (the sounds, the flexibility and the wider palette than previous Moog monosynths), am ambivalent about it (the width and action of the keyboard), or hate it (the mechanism for configuring it and programming complex sounds). Maybe I should accept that I currently feel all three of these emotions simultaneously. So, will I be buying one? Not in its current form. But give me a wider keyboard, a screen and a clearer programming system, and things could be different. But if you feel that — for you — the Messenger represents a good compromise between size, facilities and cost, I don’t think that you’ll be disappointed with its sound.