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)
The Modal CraftSynth 2 is in this category. I have one and I’d say I like it (but maybe not love it) - great for a class of digital wavetable sound no analog synth can match (but also does decent analog-ish subtractive synthesis). The SH101-style sequencer in the CraftSynth2 is a bit different to the usual, but in a fun way - works quite well for acid IMO.
The Korg NTS-1 is handy as long you are sequencing / playing it via an external controller - the ribbon keyboard on it isn’t useful. It’s versatile since it also makes a good effects unit (which is how I use it almost exclusively). There are a bunch of free and paid ‘plugins’ you can load onto it to expand the sound palette too, and even write your own using the open SDK if you are so inclined.
Deeper into DIY, Shruthi, Anushri, TSynth and (sadly unobtainium) Plinky probably fit on this list.
Great suggestions thanks!
The modal craftsynth and skulpt don’t really do it for me after watching a few vids. They certainly fit the bill of what I asked for but they just seem a little boring.
Yeah the NTS-1 looks like a great piece of kit for the price. I’ve seen a couple mentions of the expandability of the firmware, any suggestions on which plugins to look into?
Those DIY ones look super fun and will be a great excuse to get out the soldering iron! It’s also opened my eyes to all the whacky DIY stuff on Etsy that I’ve never heard of!