Moog MF-101 Moogerfooger Lowpass Filter
A Minimoog filter in a stompbox, with a voltage-control patch bay bolted to the back — the pedal that convinced a generation of guitarists and synth players that a filter could be an instrument.
Overview
The MF-101 is a predecessor to the other Moogerfoogers, and it wears the family resemblance openly: Minimoog-style knobs on a wood-and-steel chassis, with a panel that looks like a pedal but behaves like a synthesizer module. It is the piece of Moogerfooger gear that other Moogerfooger gear gets compared to; when the company later introduced a 500-series rack module, its product marketing manager described engineers using it "like they would an MF-101," chasing the same saturation and vibe in a studio format.
The headline feature is the filter itself, a genuine Moog ladder lowpass, and the pedal's real identity is voltage control. The MF-101 gives voltage control over filter cutoff, filter response, the amount of input from the envelope follower used to sweep the filter, and the mix between source and processed signal. An Envelope Output jack lets the envelope follower's contour be sent to another voltage-controlled device — a theremin, another Moogerfooger, a modular — which is why so many of these ended up on tabletops rather than floors. Big Briar's passive EP-1 Expression pedal (listed at $40 in period coverage) plugs straight into the CV inputs, and the pedal was priced at $299 when the Moogerfooger line was being written up as a nascent modular system — a framing echoed in EQ Magazine (November 2003, p.36), which surveyed the line's CV-friendly stompboxes alongside other touch-pad and filter pedals of the era.
That system framing is worth understanding, because it's how the MF-101 was pitched and how it's still used. In a contemporary survey of the line, the Moogerfooger products were described as configurable into a synthesizer — a somewhat limited one — with the MF-101 supplying the filter, the MF-102 ring modulator supplying LFO and carrier oscillators, the CP-251 control-voltage processor adding an LFO and noise source, and the MF-103 phaser contributing its own LFO. Set the MF-101 into resonance and it becomes a tone source in its own right. Whether that adds up to a "true" modular is a debate purists apparently had even then; what matters practically is that every Moogerfooger speaks CV, and the MF-101 is the module most people reach for first.
The ergonomics are the recurring gripe. The effects look like they should live on a floor, but they interface nicely with synths on a tabletop — and patching them together is cumbersome because the jacks sit on the rear panel facing away from the player. The consolation is that once everything is patched, the cables stay well clear of the control surface. It's the kind of design compromise that makes sense the moment you've got three of them chained and a pedal board's worth of expression control hanging off the back.
Collectors should note the lineage: the MF-101 came from Big Briar, and that provenance is part of why early units carry a certain gravity. The line's later addition, the MF-104 Analog Delay, was limited to an edition of 1,000 units — a reminder that Moogerfooger production was never mass-market in the way a Boss pedal was.
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