(MuseWire) – As if the announcement about the Moog Voyager XL and a new iPhone audio app weren’t enough, music dealers have started putting Moog’s latest creation into their sell systems, even though it’s not officially yet on Moog Music’s own website. The new Moog SlimPhatty is basically a keyboardless version of the Moog Little Phatty which recreates all those great 2-oscillator Moog synths, such as those played by many ’80s bands who used the smaller synths (think Howard Jones) in lieu of the 3-oscillator Minimoog or multi-voice Polymoog.

Looking at the photo you can see it has much of the juicy goodness of the Little Phatty, and truly gives Dave Smith a run for the money, as well as all the boutique builders, with a slam-bam price point of $795 (street, $845 list).

Here’s the specs, so far, presumably identical to the Little Phatty (but I haven’t done a side-by-side to check yet):
Two rock-solid oscillators
Universal internal power supply
Arpeggiator
100 presets – all new sound bank!
24 db/Oct Moog Ladder filer with filter Overload control and single Output VCA
2 ASDR Envelope Generators
Modulation section with 4 waveform LFO (with MIDI clock sync and tap tempo available) and
1×2 Mod Buss with 8 possible modulation sources and 4 possible destinations
Headphone out
Output on/off and Master Volume

I/O
External Audio In
Audio Out (mono)
Din MIDI In, Out and Thru; MIDI over USB
CV Ins for Filter, Volume and Pitch (1v/oct.) and Gate in.

Shipping soon (dealers show “awaiting shipment” on their sites, right now, such as AudioMidi, et al). Considering it’s October, I think based on Moog and all the other companies starting to poke their heads out a little further from their turtle shells, the January NAMM show looks like there might be a lot of cool kit floating about for 2011.