Moog cp 251 owner manual

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2 Welcome to the world of moogerfooger® Analog Effects Modules! Your Model CP251 Control Processor is a rugged, professional-quality instrument, designed to be equally at home on stage or in the studio. Its great functionality and classic effects come from its state-of-the-art all-analog circuitry, designed and built under Bob Moog's personal direction. Your CP251 is a direct descendent of the original modular Moog-„¢ synthesizers. It contains a total of eight independent control signal generating and processing functions. Used with other moogerfoogers, voltage-controlled analog synthesizers, MIDI- to-CV converters, or other devices that produce or accept analog control signals, the CP251 enables you to create an amazing variety of dynamic synthesizer effects. The following pages will first introduce voltage control, which is the basic technical principle underlying modular analog synthesizers. Next we'll describe each of the CP251's eight functions. After that, you'll find a few typical patches, which will give you some good ideas about how you can use the CP251 with your voltage-controlled gear. At the end of this booklet you'll find technical specifications, service and warranty information, and information about Moog Music. CONTENTS BASIC THEORY - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 3 GETTING STARTED - TOUR OF THE MODULES - 6 USING THE CP251 WITH MF-SERIES DEVICES - 15 TECHNICAL INFORMATION - - - - - - - - - - - 24 WARRANTY INFORMATION - - - - - - - - - - - 27

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3 SOME BASIC THEORY When you first try out an audio processor like a ring modulator or phaser, you plug your instrument into the AUDIO IN jack, connect the AUDIO OUT jack to your amplifier, and immediately hear what it does by playing your instrument. There are no AUDIO IN or AUDIO OUT jacks on the CP251. This is because it is not designed to process audio (musical sounds). Rather, it processes control signals, those electrical voltages which act as 'phantom hands', changing the performance parameters on your voltage-controlled equipment with speed and precision. The use of control signals to produce interesting musical effects is called voltage control. We'll begin with a brief discussion of voltage control, followed by a tour of the CP251's functions. This will provide enough information for you to explore all the features of your CP251. Then, after the section where we show some useful patches, we'll provide more detailed technical information for those who are interested. WHAT IS VOLTAGE CONTROL? Imagine an oscillator module. An oscillator produces a signal that repeats regularly. If it repeats between 20 and 20,000 times a second, then we hear it as a pitched tone. Figure 1 shows a simple oscillator with a signal output jack and a frequency control knob. The oscillator signal appears at the output jack, and the oscillator frequency may be varied by turning the knob. The knob on our oscillator is calibrated in Hertz (one Hz. = one cycle per second). If you feed the oscillator output to an input on your amplifier, you'll hear a tone whose pitch goes from low to high as you turn the knob clockwise. Figure 1 - LEFT: Simple oscillator with a signal output jack and a frequency control knob; RIGHT: Waveform that appears at the OUTPUT jack. Now imagine that we add a frequency control input jack to the oscillator. You can apply an electrical voltage to this jack. As you increase the voltage, say from zero volts to +5 volts, the oscillator frequency increases (See Figure 2). In other words, increasing the voltage at the frequency control input of the oscillator has the same effect as turning the oscillator's frequency knob clockwise. You can use either the knob or the