Win a Minimoog Signed by Todd Rundgren – Synth Journal
Also, Roger Linn gets some YouTube love
5,0 / 5,0 | 
This week, we have the latest Bob Moog Foundation Minimoog raffle, a rather sumptuous 5U modular from muSonics and a couple of ingenious desktop synths.
Synth Journal – 11th September, 2025
The Bob Moog Foundation Minimoog Raffle, Signed by Todd Rundgren
This fall’s Bob Moog Foundation raffle is here, and it’s another doozy! This time, you could be the lucky winner of a fully restored vintage Minimoog Model D synthesizer, serial number 4605. Originally manufactured in Moog Music’s Williamsville, NY factory in the early 1970s, the Minimoog was restored by current Moog Music engineer Tim Johnston.
This time, it has been signed by musical legend Todd Rundgren, an innovator, producer and, like this Minimoog, a unique individual!
“The Moog modular synthesizer and the Minimoog helped define my sound,” noted Todd Rundgren. “I am thrilled to have signed this fully restored vintage Minimoog for the Bob Moog Foundation in support of their educational efforts, including Dr. Bob’s SoundSchool, which inspires thousands of elementary school students through sound every year.”
The funds raised through this raffle will be used to support one of the Foundation’s major projects, Dr Bob’s SoundSchool, which teaches elementary school kids in the U.S. all about the science of sound. It’s a fantastic cause and has helped over 35,000 kids to better understand how sound works.
Tickets are $25 each, 5 for $100, 12 for $200, and 35 for $500. The raffle begins Monday, September 8th at 7:00 am EDT and ends 11:59 pm EDT Monday, September 29th, 2025. The raffle is open internationally. Click here to learn more about the Bob Moog Foundation and its work.
muSonics Four Voice 5U Modular Synth Previewed at Knobcon 25
It’s been nearly two years since Suit & Tie Guy announced his ‘Vanilla Synth’ and now, in an age old synthesizer tradition, we have the Four Voice Vanilla Synth, which debuted, quite appropriately, at Knobcon 2025 in Chicago! It’s appropriate because Knobcon is organised by Suit himself!
Not a huge amount is known about this synth other than it is four Vanilla Synth’s ensconced in a lovely wood cabinet and delivery a rich, creamy and rather delicious sound, ably demonstrated by one of my favourite humans on the planet, Matt Baxley, aka Moot Booxle.
The video was captured by Amanda Chaudray, who runs the fabulous CatSynth TV channel. We have yet to receive any details, pricing or availability, but you will be the first to hear just as soon as we do. Until then, why not check out the muSonics website and learn about the single voice version!
Conductive Labs Terrain
Another debutant at the brilliant Knobcon 2025 was the Terrain synthesizer from Conductive Labs. Rather than go into detail about what terrain synthesis is, why not watch the video below and allow its inventor to explain it much better than I could!
Whether you fully understand it now or not, I think you will agree that the sounds it creates are rather nice indeed! Four layers of eight voices that use this unique oscillator design are capable of delivering powerful, complex and evolving sounds with the ability to morph between two terrains per voice.
The spec sheet is very long and hugely exciting, and I am looking forward to getting hands on with this at some point. Hopefully, we will see it outside of the U.S.A., possibly at Superbooth 2026? The ability to load your own images and wavetable terrains, whilst not particularly new, promises a wealth of unique tones.
There’s a Kickstarter campaign starting soon, and you can sign up for announcements at the Conductive Labs website, where you can also watch more videos and listen to more audio demos of what seems to be an incredibly exciting synthesizer!
Roger Linn – The King of Drum Machines
I love a good documentary, I do. I am also rather fond of drum machines, particularly those made by one Roger Linn. The Linn LM-1 was the first sample-based drum machine that literally kick-started a product line that had been stuck in the world of analogue circuitry.
With the LM-1, you could program beats and rhythm patterns that used real drum sounds and never got tired, never lost time and could do whatever the programmer told it to do. The list of artists and songs that utilised Roger’s LM-1, and subsequently the LinnDrum and Linn 9000, is far too long to list here.
He then joined forces with Akai to change the course of popular music once more with his MPC 60 design. The legacy of the MPC is huge, being at the centre of not just a wealth of songs, but entire genres of music.
This short but well put-together documentary is made even better by its creator choosing to let Roger himself tell his story through archive footage. So many of these things are self-indulgent pieces of revisionist fluff, but this one carefully manages to avoid that.
Whether Roger Linn is the “King of Drum Machines” is a debatable point. There have been many such instruments that do amazing things, but it is fair to say that Roger massively influenced the digital drum machine marketplace almost single-handedly. And for that, we are immensely grateful.
Rainy Day Electronics Cumulus
Another very interesting tabletop synth entered our view this week in the shape of the Cumulus Loopscaper from Rainy Day Electronics. It’s a sample-based instrument whose purpose is to transform the audio you put into it in new, flexible and exciting ways.
There are four tracks into which you can put or record your samples, each having their own playhead, so you can fire them all off at different times, creating unique and unpredictable loops of loveliness. It has a nicely laid out control surface, at the centre of which is a nice little touch screen.
You can play and loop your samples in a myriad ways, as well as process them through 6-stage envelopes and dual LFOs per track! There’s also a rather large and flexible modulation matrix and a lush global reverb to add that sense of space to your creations.
You can record your own samples into the Cumulus as well as storing and managing them using the built-in microSD card storage. It is battery-powered using a rechargeable power cell that can provide around 10.5 hours of usage on a single charge.
There’s also an online patch editor, and you can choose the colour of your knobs too! You can also process external audio in real time! This looks and sounds like a hugely inspirational box of tricks that I can see being used very productively both live and in the studio. You can buy Cumulus from the Rainy Day website for just $475 USD.
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One response to “Win a Minimoog Signed by Todd Rundgren – Synth Journal”
Raffle tickets that you never receive, physical nor digital from a raffle you will never see online after the winner is chosen.