How Richard Wright's Minimoog Cut Through the Neve Console on Dark Side of the Moon

The Minimoog on Dark Side of the Moon isn’t just a solo instrument — it’s the album’s secret glue. Richard Wright used it on at least four tracks: the descending bass line and the two-note solo in “Money”, the wobbly pad throughout “Any Colour You Like”, the slow filter sweeps on “The Great Gig in the Sky”, and the bubbling sequence intro on “On the Run”. On “Money”, the solo was actually a single take; Wright played it live over the tape loop, and the filter resonance was cranked so hard it nearly self-oscillates.

To get that aggressive bite, Wright ran the Minimoog directly into the Abbey Road Neve console’s mic preamps, bypassing the line inputs. This pushed the signal hot and introduced a slight transformer saturation that rounded the top end while keeping the filter snappy. The Neve’s 3-band EQ then further shaped the resonance peak — especially on “Any Colour You Like”, where the filter is set to open and close in time with the rhythm track, creating that pulsing synth pad that feels like a breathing organism. No external compressors or distortion pedals; just the Moog’s own voltage-controlled filter slamming into a Neve input transformer.