If your inbox is anything like ours, it will be getting absolutely battered with emails about Black Friday deals at the moment. So we’ll keep this part short and sweet: we’re launching a week of special seasonal offers on Monday 25th November. Like our last sale, rather than just offering a small discount on everything in the store, we’ll have some much bigger deals (up to 50% off!) on a carefully curated selection of products, so keep an eye on the site.

In the meantime, you may have noticed that Teenage Engineering broke the internet (well, the ‘synth-ternet’ at least) last week with the launch of their latest compact workstation, the OP-XY. We’ve ordered as many as we can get our hands on and they’re up for pre-order now. Initial stocks are pretty limited, though, so don’t hang around.

We have a small handful of the Make Noise Bruxa experimental delay module left after sending out the units to those who pre-ordered. This was a one-off, never-to-be-repeated run, so don’t sleep if you were considering it! We’ve also restocked a few of this year’s biggest sellers: the Body Synths Metal Fetishist, the Forge-TME Vhikk X and Making Sound Machines DivSkip.

We’ve got a fresh batch of DivKid’s other collaboration module, the Vostock Trace, winging its way to us as we type, and you can sign up via the product page to be notified when that’s arrived. Did we mention that you can now get notifications when out-of-stock items are back? It’s been one of the most requested features on the site, so go ahead and give it a try.

Finally, no sooner had we announced our in-store event with ALM Busy Circuits last time than we realised we’d have to postpone it due to a schedule clash. It will now happen in March, so look out for more news nearer the time. We’ve also got something special lined up for January which we’ll tell you about very soon!

Until next time,

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

Festive gift guide

’Tis the season for gifting, so we’ve pulled together some suggestions for what to get the synth-lover in your life! We’ve pulled together a few of our favourite picks from the store on the blog, and we’ve divided our Gift Ideas section of the store into under £20, £20-49, £50-99 and £100 and over categories so there’s something for every budget.

Latest arrivals & pre-orders

Tiptop Audio continue their quest to make classic Buchla modules accessible to all with the 285t frequency shifter. Not to be confused with a pitch shifter, a frequency shifter changes frequencies linearly and can be used for all kinds of creative effects, from subtle swirling stereo chorus to wild, clangorous experimentation. Throw in balanced modulation/ring modulation functionality and you have a module that's perfect for sonic explorers.

Don’t be deceived by the cute looks - the Kiviak Instruments WoFi is no toy! This portable, WiFi-equipped, lo-fi sampling keyboard packs in emulations of classic samplers, intuitive sequencing plus a granular-style Texturer effect that’s perfect for ambient creations.

Sharing the same form factor as Xaoc Devices’ popular Tallin dual saturating VCA, Lublin takes a different approach, combining a clean signal path with a ping input that triggers a decay envelope modelled on the behaviour of vintage vactrols. Like an LPG without the filtering, it brings something pretty fresh to the table - check out Tom’s video to hear it in action. Up for pre-order and due in any day now.

Fresh in from Argentina’s GS Music is the e7, a seven-voice desktop analogue polysynth that’s one of the finest machines we've played on in the last few years. It’s seriously underrated and sounds fantastic - check out Matt Johnson’s demo to hear it at its best. A great option if you're looking for a versatile, classic-sounding analogue poly that won’t break the bank.

We recently had a delivery from Nervous Squirrel containing some of the most creative/bonkers Eurorack modules around, including the Ore-Some Volts which uses uranium ore (!) and a Geiger counter to generate CV. If that’s a bit too much, there’s also the String Thing 3D joystick controller and the Zeno’s Paradox clock divider, for those times when you absolutely need to divide a clock down by over a billion (that’s one clock pulse every 34 years with a 1Hz input).

Podcast pick

The latest Why We Bleep podcast is a great chat with none other than Utah Saints, one of the biggest dance acts of the early 90s. They reminisce about performing on Top of the Pops, touring the world with the likes of Aphex Twin, Orbital and Moby, sampling Kate Bush and making dance music in the days before DAWs. Check it on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

And finally...

You may not know it, but deep in the bowels of Signal Sounds HQ is a fully equipped workshop where we deal with anything faulty that comes back to us under warranty, and we can fix a lot of stuff in-house. We can even build DIY kits for you (like the one above) if you’re not so confident with a soldering iron! For any enquiries, drop an email to [email protected]

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