Isla Electronics’ Caladan is finally real: the multitimbral hybrid synth with hot-swappable voice cards is heading into production for a Summer 2026 launch. One chassis, eight parts, and a rack of analogue and digital engines you swap like cartridges.
After twenty years, Tweakbench is back with Tendril, a generative instrument with a Euclidean sequencer, per-note locks and a granular-sculpted subtractive engine. $10 in the bundle.
Behringer is shipping the JT-2, an analog paraphonic synth packing one Roland Jupiter-8 voice into an 80 HP Eurorack module that also works standalone. Dual VCOs, switchable filter and arpeggiator, around $189.
Doppler shapes any source into a kick, snare or hi-hat via a delay-line pitch engine. Its real trick: swapping firmware by dropping a physical overlay onto the panel, no computer needed. 6 HP, €270, shipping now.
Five oscillators, 60 voices, 3 GB of waveforms and a 120-knob front panel: Tom Horn’s SinTH2 carries the Roland JD-800 spirit into a fully hand-wired boutique instrument.
The TempoKEY K32 Play tucks a sound module, a battery and a speaker into a compact MIDI controller. The pitch: make music anywhere, laptop-free, for under $150.
Jamstik has launched Loon, a software instrument that stacks three fully independent sound layers — virtual analog, four-operator FM, multisamples and filters — inside a single patch. Aimed as much at MIDI guitarists as at MPE keyboard players, it leans on playing expression as hard as it does on sound design. Launch price: $49.99 (rising to $99.99), and free for anyone who owns a Jamstik MIDI guitar.
reFX, the company behind Nexus, is stepping into synthesis for the first time with Rippler, a physical modeling synthesizer. It’s the commercial version of a much-loved open-source plug-in, now beefed up with two wavefolding oscillators and multimode filters.
Native Instruments just dropped a synth dedicated to the supersaw. Time to sort the field: eight plugins — two free, six paid — that deliver that wall of detuned saws, ranked in honest families by what they actually do best.
Eventide had left its H9 untouched for a long time. The brand is correcting that with the H9 Harmonizer Gen 2, a revamp that squeezes the core of its flagship H90 engine into the compact enclosure that made the original so successful. Available since 24 June 2026, it is priced at $599 (€699). Behind the “pedal” packaging, this is a serious effects processor getting a long-overdue update. A pedal that hadn’t really changed since 2013 The original H9 came out in 2013 and has never really been replaced: thirteen years on the market, an unusually long life for a digital…