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WhoreMods -> ARP or Moog? (11/2/2016 1:18:12 PM)
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Which of the two big '70s synth companies was the best?
A lot of people assume that any '70s or late '60s record with squelchy synth noises on it used Moogs, but a lot of people, particularly those who played live a lot, seemed to prefer ARPs. ARP's biggest model, the 2600 was used widely for film special effects (R2 D2 and the alien squawk off in Close Encounters were both played on ARps, rather than Moogs), by the BBC (The Radiophonics workshop had acquired a couple of ARP Odysseys by the middle of the decade, allegedly because everybody hated the VCS3 which was the first synthesiser they'd not built themselves), and by a lot of bands who wanted a synth that'd stay in tune for longer than five minutes at a time. Edgar Winter, Pete Townshend, Jean Paul Jones, Jean Micheal Jarre, Joe Zawinul, Peter Hammill, Jan Hammer and Kraftwerk all favoured ARPs over Moogs. (So did Rick Wakeman by most accounts, but he was stuck using Moogs with Yes as that was what he'd played on the albums). Moog had an equally impressive list of supporters, but Gary Numan wasn't the only one of these who was able to use Moogs as other people started dumping them when polysynths began to come in.
Emphasising two brands above everybody else (there were plenty of other synth companies about in the '70s: Toto favoured Oberheims and Serges, and both Brian Eno the Floyd liked EMS' stuff a lot more than the BBC seemed to) is more than a little unfair, but they do seem to have been the big two. Anybody have a preference for one or the other? Moogs were esteemed for their fatter sound, whereas ARPs were seen as more flexible and a lot easier to use live. Of course, a persuasive argument as to why Crumar/EDP/Whatevs is better than either would be worth hearing as well.
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