> That explains a lot - so it's [the Taurus] not a cut-down Mini at
> all?
No, definitely not. They share the same basic ladder filter circuit,
but otherwise they are quite different. Apart from the oscillators,
the Mini is basically an all-transistor design, whereas the Taurus
uses 3080 ICs in the filter and VCA, for example. What this means is
that the two instruments probably have different distortion
characteristics -- i.e. subtle differences in tone colour even with
similar parameter settings.
Looking at various schematics, the Micro- and Multimoog use a lot of
the same components as the Taurus (which isn't surprising as they're
all mid-'70s designs), but to me it seems that the Micro and Multi
are more sophisticated and "hi-fi", so to speak, whereas the Taurus
really is kind of stripped-down and raw. Which is probably why it
sounds so great.
-joachim (who'll try to be more on-topic in the future...)