It’s always fascinating when two very different companies collaborate on a product – as their specialities and priorities can either work harmoniously or go fabulously awry. Korg and littleBits seem to have achieved the former, with a DIY synth kit that lets synthesizer beginners and affecionados alike combine magnetic-attaching modular elements to make awesome instruments and patches.
Watch Reggie Watts introduce and show off the kit in this video:
The different elements in the synth kit include oscillators, a keyboard, a sequencer, filter, delay, mixer, speaker, envelope controller, and random noise generator – and paired with the suggested combinations of Bits in the kit as well as their basic video tutorials, the elements are likely to be just as much an educational tool as a legitimate instrument.
The kit is expected to ship December 6th, coming in at a relatively reasonable $159 – learn more and preorder here.
Seriously this is awesome! Young artists, and old alike, gain more respect for the music, the more they can literally get down to the core functions of how synth works. The only way you learn is by experimenting.
OMG!!!! i thought the monotron and monotribe were bad ass when they came out, with midi leads on the pcb. a small kit and a bit of soldering and away you go, but this…. i want one or two… look at the price and realize that this isn’t another controller, but a modular analog synth.
really nice, but to x-pensive.
REALLY? EXPESIVE? EXPENSIVE?!?!?!?!?! 170$!!!!!!
its only 170. what were you guys really expecting here. i think this is the coolest thing, whether you wanna call it a toy or not. seriously, could waste a whole afternoon playing with this.
I remember people saying the TB-303 was nothing than that of a “toy” back in 84. You can’t knock the tools in the hands of a good musical creator.
Honestly the demos aren’t very impressive :s
I was excited about it but it’s not worth that much for a novelty.
Seems really great for teaching or something like this, but this it’s actually more a toy than a synth. Would be really great to have something like this taken more seriously… I mean professionally.
they do, it’s called a moog.
Yeah, because Korg makes Moog and a Moog is very customizable.
you asked about a professional modular synth, which moogs are. as for korg, i take it that you don’t know much about the company or its’ history, korg just happens to be one of those companies that was making modular synths 40/50 years ago.
Nope, i asked for a professional DIY customizable synth kit. Learn to read.
a close friend of mine has been building his synth (moog) module by module for the last ten years. my approach is closer to this, but on a smaller scale for now. http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2013/09/30/epic-diy-synth-build-time-lapse-movie/#more-52327
That’s fucking awesome! Never seen this before…
examples of moogs that i speak of… http://machines.hyperreal.org/manufacturers/Moog/Modular/images/moog.55.jpg
and modules… http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2263/1553248762_fb5a65ab37_z.jpg