Black Friday? Cyber Monday? Who need them? The entire month of December seems to be on sale when it comes to music tech.

Christmas (and Hanukkah, for that matter) are nearly here. Whether it’s economic pressure or just some aggressive holiday pricing, there are some big deals out there that could make excellent gifts – or might just give you a nice list for shopping for yourself before or after the holidays. (Yes, it’s true: most of what readers suggested in our “gift guide” for the CDM Winter 08 special wasn’t really all that practical. But it does make a nice list of things you love.)

Here’s some of what’s on our radar screen:

While on the subject of Moog Music, the good peoples of Moog have a number of small announcements that should be welcome news to Moog fans.

First, the new EP2 Expression Pedal is a hefty (2.55-pound) pedal with adjustable external output level. Heavy-duty build and more expression control could make this one to get at US$44.

EP2 Expression Pedal

Moog also has a couple of announcements for owners of their Little Phatty synth. The Mac/Windows Little Phatty Editor Librarian is a much-needed tool for managing presets and settings on Moog’s synth keyboard, with support for custom preset banks for performance, high-precision (up to 16-bit) sound editing, and even a “Preset Genetics” tools for morphing and mutating old presets into new presets. (Anyone remember Kai’s Power Tools, the groundbreaking visual app for Macs? Okay, I’m getting off-topic.)

The editor is US$69, and a demo is available.

Little Phatty Editor Librarian

In the free category for the Little Phatty, the 1.03c OS update has a small version number but some important features. Biggest among them: high-resolution MIDI data for modulation wheel and filter cutoff (interestingly, both send and receive). I wish more synths would implement this, in software and hardware alike. Also included in the update: some preset saving and MIDI Setup improvements, and most importantly, MIDI Merge and Poly modes. Merge gives you a real Thru; Poly provides the ability to rack together multiple Moog synths into a monster, polyphonic Moog rig, you lucky bastards with your multiple Moogs!

Little Phatty Stage Software; Tribute Software [OS updates, other updates]