I had to YouTube the studio recording to check it back against how I had remembered it. For one thing, it seems to be missing that analog vinyl component.
It is missing a little something but I have no doubt I can layer in a sound to texturize it a bit...
... adding in a second or possibly 3rd osc and detune slightly to give it a real "classic" Mini Moog fatness.
Yes, it is. I tossed in the extra detuned oscillator ("Bonus Points" above) to thicken it up, but that's not quite it. I was hearing something like two oscillators with staggered portamento times. At the moment, I like a very small (milliseconds) delay better than the multi-oscillator detuning effect, (or perhaps use both). Along the lines of:
Switch SYNTH to EFFECTS up top.
Delay [1] -> Stereo Delay.
L -
TIME - R -> 0.04 s __ 0.05 s
That effect falls apart when it catches up at the high C, so you can't linger there too long! I also fooled around with Perform -> ANALOG -> Drift. In this context, it's subtle. This effect seems to be more distinct over time with steady state notes / pitches.
I did find I had to automate the portamento time so It could be longer for the shorter drift down to the A ...
See, I was programming it on-the-fly with a live keyboard and the z3ta+2 microhost. I guess that's what I meant by "drifting" down to A. You can change the portamento rate somewhat by delaying your overlapping notes, or hitting some interim notes on the way to the target note.
We're faking a monophonic synth here, so faithful retro-portamento takes some tweaking and technique / note placement to get it just right. Funny; in the original analogs, this was an automatic, and often had its own limitations.
I used to make this sound on a Minimoog, and it came out pretty good.
Wonder if it was used on the original recording? I would think so; it's not an ARP. When this song came out, I was more focused on Gary Richrath's guitar licks.
Something else that I left out: Filters. I did this intentionally, because I remembered it as a wide-open sawtooth oscillator. But as the 'siren' is sustained, and the guitar kicks in, you can definitely hear some high cutoff frequency knob-twiddling going on.
EDIT: There is also some reverb in the recording I heard. Any combination of 'verb, depth, and damping in z3ta+2 was too overpowering for me. You'd have to bring in an outboard reverb or 're-amped' room for that. Again, I wonder if this was added in a 'remastered' session, or I just never really heard it on vinyl at eardrum-shattering levels.