So do you think that InMusic looked at Moog and said “Do you know what the problem is with this company? People are paying them too much money. We should sell their things for less money instead.”
Maybe. If the Moog warehouse was sitting on a ton of inventory that they couldn’t move because of the nosebleed prices. But I haven’t heard anything to that effect nor have I seen the price drops I would have expected were that the case. People buy their expensive synths.
So let’s say InMusic bought a premium synth brand in part because of that brand’s ability to command top-dollar prices. Which would you do?
Cut prices on the next flagship release so that everyone now expects to get premium products at discount prices thus destroying all the value in the brand?
Make a thing that lives up to the legacy (both in quality and price) so that everyone knows “Oh, it’s still a Moog”?
My money’s on #2.
Now, another direction they could go is to release something of low price and low quality to help win back some of those customers going to clones. Moog traditionally wasn’t willing to do that. Maybe InMusic is. But:
Everything about the photos so far lead me to believe this is a high-fit-and-finish model in the vein of the D, Voyager, and One. Very different from the modulars and Matriarch (which has, for example, conspicuously less wood)
Even were they to adopt this strategy, I wouldn’t do it as the first thing out the gate. You talk about them wanting good PR. What’s the headline they want? “Moog is still Moog” or “Quality just isn’t there after InMusic”.
Why even risk it? They’ve got, like, 100 brands. Just release the cheap Moog stuff from one of those and leave the premium Moog name untarnished.
In short (too late), this looks like a top-tier product. They’re incentivized to charge top-tier prices. And if they eventually do decide to start doing “budget-tier” synths, they won’t do it first thing, and they’ll probably do it under some other brand.
But I’d love to be wrong. I like the idea of being able to afford a Moog poly.
But I want it to be a Top-Tier, Premium Moog Poly, at Behringer Clone Budget-Tier prices, and readily available at all major retailers next week. That’s gotta count for something.
Maybe another factor that weighs into option #2 you mentioned — if there’s a complete hardware version of this synth out in the wild, it had to be in development for a while, likely before the InMusic acquisition, so in that since this really would be “still a Moog.”
Maybe in their conversations with InMusic, Moog said something like, “We have a new flagship poly synth in the works, it’s going to be amazing, but we don’t have the resources to get it out in the world. But if you buy Moog now, you’ll get to usher in the next legacy of Moog flagship synths, that’s how we’ll kick off the next chapter.”
I don’t know, I’m fully speculating. But I agree with your take.
It sort of has a parallel with the Sequential Take 5 which was very nicely priced for new consumers. They had a new colab as well. Very much in the same vein of new ownership making their mark.
No, I mean the whole front panel. It looks like (don’t know the exact terminology) a plastic sticker. Ive seen this before, but usually on lower tier electronics.
AFAIK that’s how Moog manufacture their front panels. My Sub37 has a massive sticker to label the whole front panel as well. Pretty sure the One is the same.
If they can hit at the Rev2 price point with more features than a Sequential six (small mod matrix, 2 LFOs, etc), I might be interested. I don’t think bitimbrality is enough if it’s still a 2 oscillator 1 LFO synth.
If they can’t, I’ll keep buying AJH modules and move on with my life - I already have a Trigon.
