As is typical for post-millennium Moogs, the Sub37 comes with 2 standard oscillators with octave switches and fully-sweepable wave knobs, which can yield some extremely exciting possibilities. Alongside the 2 normal Oscs, it also sports a Sub oscillator (which is just a Square wave tuned 1 octave below Osc 1), and a Pink Noise generator.
The oscillators are brighter than the Slim Phatty, but not quite as aggressive as the Sub Phatty. They definitely sound more ‘modern’ than the Slim Phatty, and not quite as classically-Moogy as the Slim/Little Phatty or earlier Moogs.
Past the 7:00 position on the Mixer gain dials, the Oscillators start to overdrive, which can yield some pleasingly gnarly tones when combined with the Feedback and Multidrive, but can make creating smoother gentler sounds a bit more challenging. You have to be especially mindful of this when trying to use pure Sawtooth waves in your sounds, as pushing them too hard starts to clip them and turn them into Square waves. The headroom on the Oscs was expanded for the Subsequent37, so this section doesn’t apply to that model.
Like with the Sub Phatty, the Pink Noise generator is a nice extra, but would have been better-implemented as a White Noise generator, to make it easier to use in modern Techno and Trance and House sounds. The low end on the Pink Noise overwhelms sounds a bit too easily and interferes with tonal balance on uppper-register sounds.
What’s nice though, like with the Sub Phatty (and much easier to manipulate on the 37), is the ability to detune Osc 2 from Osc 1, with more granular controls for the detuning, via the Beat Freq knob, so you can achieve some nice Reese basses or detuned hard trance lead sounds.
The PWM on this is really nice, and being able to fully sweep the waves independently with each LFO yields some very cool sounds.
And one mode that is super nice, is Duo Mode. With that enabled, you can play paraphonic 2-note chords, which is a lot of fun.
