Satellite

Back in 1973, this compact powerhouse was Moog's clever answer to the preset synth craze, with the first 5000 units hand-built by Thomas Organ to meet skyrocketing demand before Moog took over production.

A single analog VCO dishes out sawtooth and square waves across 12 presets like brass, reeds, strings, bell, and lunar, feeding into a unique dual-filter setup: a 12dB/octave OTA bandpass followed by the classic Moog ladder lowpass. Tweak them via slide controls for color (cutoff), emphasis (resonance), and contour (envelope shaping for filter and volume), plus a fast LFO with sine/square waves for vibrato, tremolo, rate, and depth. Glide and repeat buttons add playful portamento and stutter effects, all played on a 37-key synth-action keyboard in a sturdy wooden case with low/high outputs, master tune, and rear volume knob.

Players love its immediate, organ-friendly sounds that punch through mixes, as heard in Vangelis and Ronnie Foster's work, though some note the limited oscillator tweaking keeps it more preset performer than deep tweaker.