Trent Reznor and the Last Days of An Iconic Synthesizer

After 13 years & 14,000 instruments, production of the Minimoog Voyager is coming to an end.

Moog will lovingly handcraft 600 final units of the Minimoog Voyager at their factory in downtown Asheville, NC before saying goodbye.

The Minimoog Voyager is the foundation of the modern Moog synthesizer. When it went into production in 2002, it signaled the rebirth of Moog Music, and the re-emergence of the analog synthesizer as a viable creative tool in our increasingly digital world. The design philosophy behind the Minimoog Voyager set the pattern for all of Moog’s subsequent work: where beauty, high mechanical quality, and sonic excellence are equally paramount in the service of musical ideas. The Minimoog Voyager is an embodiment of this ideology, and a wellspring of inspiration for Moog’s instrument design now and into the future.

Most importantly, the Minimoog Voyager is the last synthesizer that Bob Moog designed from start to finish. His DNA is in the circuits of this machine, and it is the culmination of Dr. Moog’s life’s work, which was dedicated to electronic musical instrument design.

Recently, Moog had the honor of sitting down with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, the genre-defining music innovator, master synthesist and Academy Award winning composer. In the interview, Reznor recounts his intimate relationship with the Minimoog Voyager, which he feels “is the archetype of what a synthesizer is and should be.” Through personal stories, Reznor reveals his decades long history with the instrument and how it has shaped the way he views and creates music. The video is set to an original score by British electronic music producer, The Haxan Cloak, co-producer of Bjork’s Vulnicura.. Befitting the occasion, the artist used a Minimoog Voyager and a prototype Mother-32, Moog’s newest synthesizer, to create the score.