I’ve preordered a Dirtywave M8 which seems like an awesome piece of gear and it’s got me really excited at the prospect of using interesting dedicated hardware machines that I can take to the park or mess with on the sofa.
The obvious ones I’ve come across so far are:
- Korg Volca range
- Roland mini synths and aira compact ranges
- Teenage Engineering OP and POs
But these all seem a little uninteresting to me and just rehashed tiny versions of older gear and/or aimed at lo-fi producers.
Some less obvious ones that have my attention are:
- Monome Norns
- 1010music lemondrop, fireball & razzmatazz (not battery powered but easily powered by a USB powerbank)
- Bastl microgranny and kastl
- Korg NTS-1
- Korg Monotrons
- Audiothingies Micromonsta 2 (again not battery powered but can be via powerbank)
Are there any you know of that fit the bill?
EDIT: Will add more cool things as I find them
- Zoom MS-70CDR - small, relatively cheap, battery powered stereo multi-FX pedal intended for guitars. Out of the box it only does time based effects like reverb, chorus and delay but there’s an easily searchable hack that lets you load any of the algorithms from any of the other digital FX pedals that Zoom makes which gives it distortion, compression, fuzz, amp modelling and loads more! (check this out for more info https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG3KO1EbFd4)
You already mentioned Roland mini synths, but I think the SH-4D is worth calling out separately from the rest. Some of its oscillator models are based on vintage synths, sure, but not all. It doesn’t feel like just another rehash to me.
Checking out the loopop video now! Thanks!
Honestly I would say the SH-4d is worth consideration if for no other reason than the immediate hands-on control of most parameters without menu diving. Makes it super fast to work with.