For a while now I've considered putting my Voyager's rear panel jacks on a patchbay to put its more useful external CV capabilities out where I can see them. I've reserved several patchbay jacks for that purpose, and as things get more cramped (don't they always?), I decided to revisit the idea. That's a lot of jacks to use up, and maybe I don't really need them all on the patchbay.
I starting taking notes while referring to the Moog manual and verifying the Voyager's behavior myself. I found a few interesting things along the way (including a typo on the front panel), and the infographic above was the result. I hope it's as useful to you as it has been to me!
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Front panel typo?!
One of the more interesting things I found, after years of not really getting it, was that my Voyager (Electric Blue edition) has a typo on the front panel that completely stymied my understanding of the modulation busses! The Voyager was my first synth, back when I didn't know anything, and maybe I just didn't care enough to dig into it -- after all, the Voyager sounds great and is fun to use even without tapping every possible modulation source.
So what's the typo?
If your Voyager looks like this, and you try to use "ON/MOD 1" as a source with the mod wheel, you likely won't get the results you expect. I always found this confusing, and though the manual does say that both busses have the same options, my brain couldn't accept that if the panel said something else, the manual must be wrong!
So, in case you too have been confused by the Voyager's Modulation Busses, hopefully this will help:
Each of the two busses have the same features: a SHAPING control, an AMOUNT control, and a performance control (which is just a second "amount" control); and a SOURCE whose effect on a DESTINATION is determined by those three controls.
In the case of the MOD. WHEEL bus, the performance control is the modulation wheel (0V to +5V), and in the case of the PEDAL/ON bus, the performance control is the MOD 1 input on the rear panel, intended for an expression pedal (0V to +5V). The reason it's called "PEDAL/ON" is that if there's nothing plugged into the MOD 1 jack, that performance control is just ON (analogous to having the mod wheel turned all the way up to +5V).
Moreover, both busses have the same SOURCEs and DESTINATIONs, despite what the panel graphic may say. If your panel, like mine, shows that the SOURCEs are different, which label is wrong? Answer: The MOD. WHEEL bus's available SOURCEs should include MOD 2, not MOD 1.
Thus both busses have access to the MOD 2 rear panel jack as one of their SOURCEs. If nothing is plugged into that jack, the input sits at +5V (ON) -- which explains why that SOURCE is called ON/MOD 2.
The "ON/MOD 1" typo even made its way into the Voyager manual (v2.5) that came with mine. Internet image searches yield both versions of the panel legend. Here's one of the clearer ones I've found:
The thing about knowing is that it all seems so obvious once you know it...
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