Well, that’s another year (almost) in the bag - how did it get to be mid-December already? It’s been a whirlwind few weeks with a Black Friday sale and loads of exciting new products launching in the run-up to Christmas, so we’ve been busier than Santa’s elves here at Signal Sounds HQ. Read on for details of some final new arrivals, our favourite gear of the year, and an exciting new in-store event we’re planning for 2025.

A quick note on our opening hours and shipping dates over the coming fortnight: we’ll be closing early on 24 and 31 December, and we’ll be closed altogether on 25 & 26 December and 1 & 2 January. If you’re in the UK and you need something to arrive before Christmas, tomorrow (Friday 20th) is really your last chance to order. For international customers, if you order today you might get lucky depending on the territory and the shipper, but we can’t promise anything!

Finally, thanks to you for being a Signal Sounds customer - we’re so grateful for your support in 2024 which has been a particularly tough year for a lot of us, and we’re looking forward to another year of keeping you supplied with the best noise-making and noise-mangling gadgetry money can buy! All the best for the festive season from everyone at Signal Sounds.

Until next time,

Jason, Aleks, Kyle, Luke, Molly, Rob & Tom

Our gear of the year

 It really has been a bumper year for new music gear, from glorious analogue polysynths to mind-bogglingly powerful Eurorack modules. So we asked a few of the Signal Sounds team, along with a few YouTuber pals like DivKid, Michael Manning and The Unperson, to choose their favourites. Check out our YouTube video to see what everyone picked - and then, why not collect the full set and make some truly amazing music in 2025?

Synth Club is coming!

Stay tuned for news of an exciting new monthly event at our Glasgow store: Synth Club! It’s an interactive meetup where you can collaborate with fellow synth aficionados to make music to a brief against the clock - inspired by activity community groups like running clubs and time-limited creative contests like the 48 Hour Film Project.

No musical experience or gear is needed, just an open mind and a collaborative attitude! If you’re interested in coming along, drop us an email at [email protected] and we’ll keep you updated with all the details ahead of the first event in the New Year.

Latest arrivals and pre-orders

It’s the module everyone’s been waiting for - and after being teased at Superbooth and Machina Bristronica, the Infinite Digits x Toadstool Tech Ectocore is finally in production! We put this break-slicing, sample-mangling marvel up for pre-order last week and it nearly crashed our website, so don’t hang around if you want to snag one from the first batch that’s arriving in January. If you’ve ever wanted to be stuck inside a tumble drier with Amon Tobin, Autechre and 2 Bad Mice fighting for control over three turntables and a copy of Recycle… now’s your chance.

New from Bastl, the Kastle 2 FX Wizard continues their popular and very affordable Kastle line with a focus on performable effects. From glitchy sound design to more conventional clean delays and flangers, this little desktop box is fully patchable, very portable and sounds fantastic!

Sometimes you just need a small set of beautifully weighted, precision-engineered knobs to map to the MIDI parameters of your choice. And the Engineering Lab EL4P is one of the finest examples we’ve encountered. It feels truly luxurious - ideal for travel/live systems or anyone who needs a no-fuss way to add some hands-on control to a DAW or synth. It’s the perfect antidote to the ‘landfill’ MIDI controllers of recent years.

New Softube firmware!

We all know computers are rubbish and DAWless jams are the ultimate expression of humankind’s advancement since caveman times but… if you have to use one then you need a shit-hot controller for the various bits of software you’re swearing at because you cant edit more than one parameter at a time with your mouse.

Swedish software legends Softube make a truly fantastic pair of controllers, Console 1 and Console 1 Fader (with motorised faders, of course), which are both on V3 hardware. They’ve just had a massive upgrade to their respective firmwares, giving even more control and flexibility with the various software packages they can link to. If you’ve ever wished your software could feel like hardware, this is the path for you!

And finally...

Talk about an early Christmas present… the Arturia MiniFreak has just had a major firmware update too! There are a whopping eight new sample playback and granular modes which turn this already-amazing synth into an absolute powerhouse. Check out Mylar’s video for all the juicy details and head to Arturia’s site to find out how to update.