Tag Archives: EP-40 Riddim

Comparison: SEQTRAK, EP-40 Riddim, Volca Sample

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I’m taking a break from the toys to compare:

All four machines are deep so you’re not going to get an in-depth analysis of features and so forth. I’m going to concentrate on immediacy and fun. Each box has its own best uses and I will offer my opinion.

A word about manuals

Wait! You were going to talk about immediacy and the first thing you mention is manuals?

All four machines support direct production of a single pattern. Sooner or later, you’ll need to learn about song structure, chaining, etc. and you will need to do menu diving. That’s where a good manual can help because if you can find information fast, you won’t lose the buzz.

In that regard, the AN200 manual is the best. Not only can you read and search the manual in PDF, the AN200 came with a nice thick paper book. In terms of content, the AN200 manual was written when Yamaha obviously cared about manuals and good technical writing.

Today, not so much. The SEQTRAK guide covers the usual front panel and button pressing stuff, but is woefully short about the SEQTRAK app. You are expected to puzzle out app functionality. Unfortunately, some app features are not obvious like click and hold on a step to reveal step parameters. It took me forever to discover that one.

The Teenage Engineering EP-40 user guide is at roughly the same level as the SEQTRAK manual. The EP-40 is more intuitive to use right out of the box. Once you want to get into customization, though, you’ll be looking into the guide. Unfortunately, TE does not provide a PDF manual and you’ll need an Internet connection to keep the guide by your side. Can’t really search the on-line manual either.

The Volca Sample 2 owner’s manual is the worst. The paper and PDF versions are broad sheets. Text is shown in mice type — too tiny for humans. I do paper origami and blow up parts of the manual onto regular 8.5″ x 11″ paper. Korg, this is ridiculous. Also in the ridiculous department is the poor readability of TE’s and SEQTRAK’s app text (tiny size, low contrast). As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I literally read the 4K 24″ monitor screen with a magnifying glass. Inexcusable.

Yamaha AN200 Loop Factory

The AN200 is the OG. It’s big (13″ x 8″) and lights up like a pachinko machine. Therein lies the magic. Ya get big back-lit buttons, big knobs, and clearly readable legends on all of the controls. There isn’t any guessing about where the SHIFT button will take you.

Yamaha AN200 — the OG

AN200 is vintage and you pay market price. Unlike the three modern machines in this comparison, the AN200 factory content is fixed and you cannot add your own samples. The factory patterns are stuck in the late 90s and if that’s your thing, good. You won’t find much downtempo or chill.

In terms of immediacy, it’s hard to beat all of those controls and lights. If you want to do more with help from a PC or Mac, you’re stuck with legacy software (the AN200 editor) from 2001.

The AN200 is fun. I enjoy working with it again. I’m capturing patterns and converting them to SEQTRAK. [I’ll leave that topic for another post.] You get five analog physical modeling voices on one synth track and three AWM rhythm tracks. People still pine for Yamaha AN of yesteryear, so I ain’t complaining.

Korg Volca Sample 2

The Sample 2 remains on the undercard. For $150 USD, you get a pretty decent sample-based beat box. The Volca can’t sample new sounds itself, so you need to load the Volca via Korg’s sample librarian.

As to immediacy and fun, the Sample 2 has a lot going for it. The front panel has a bunch of well-labelled, back-lit mini-knobs and buttons. If someone knows a little bit about beat boxes and sample playback, hey, one-two you know what to do. Like the AN200, the Sample 2 has a four digital LED display meaning feedback is limited and often cryptic.

Korg Volca Sample 2

Memory capacity is way low — too small for long loops. Even if you toss all of the rather nice factory content, you won’t be loading a lot of mix stems. I just want to tell the Sample 2, “You’re a beat box and you will always be a beat box.” Never-the-less, I don’t regret owning the little pup.

Teenage Engineering EP-40 Riddim

The TE EP-40 gets my vote as “Most fun right out of the box.” Those big buttons demand pushing and the control legends are easily read and understood. You do need a clue or two from the included Getting Started card. For example, you need to know that the “instrument” buttons select one of the four tracks, how the fader and knobs affect parameters, etc.

The funnest element is being able to perform a full song right from the git go. The Riddim says “Original Layering Machine.” That’s an apt description. You can make beats, but the ability to play and perform from long loops that stay in sync hits my sweet spot. It takes more reading to know how to drop in effects and navigate projects. The effects, by the way, are right on point. The built-in Supertone synth is not bad although you need to read about sound editing to expand its somewhat limited range.

Teenage Engineering EP-40 Riddim

I hope EP-133 K.O. II users have as much fun. A fair bit of my enthusiasm comes from the Reggae content and styling theme. TE recently upped the K.O. to 128Mbytes of sample space — just enough to be dangerous. Riddim has the ability to sample on the fly and it doesn’t take much to fill up the 32MB or so of free space. Kicking content out of Riddim is like deciding which of your children to leave behind on the loading dock. Ouch.

The EP-40 has a three digit display. It also has a large bank of Swedish hieroglyphics. I still don’t know what half of those symbols mean. 🙂 The symbols are useful when you know what they mean (e.g., MIDI activity).

I know it’s possible to make beats with this thang. OK. I am not a beat maker and prefer long loops. Thus, EP-40 suits my use case (AKA production style). I’ve been rummaging through reggae loops trying to get new “songs” together. I wish there was an easy way to audition a few loops together to see if they fit without going through the download process. Oh, well, there is always Ableton Live for that… Eventually, I will venture into downtempo and chill; I don’t see any technical barriers.

Sample 2, EP-40 and SEQTRAK have built-in speakers. The EP-40 has the best of the lot, although none of the speakers is good enough to use stand-alone for very long. All are “courtesy speakers” and you’ll be plugging into monitors anyway.

Yamaha SEQTRAK

When folks first saw SEQTRAK, they gasped, “Yamaha is trying to copy the Teenage Engineering OP look.” Yep, Yamaha’s industrial designers shot for a sleek minimalist look and hit the mark. After playing EP-40, though, my next impression was, “Gee, Yamaha achieved the look, but they left out the fun.” TE tries to build in playfulness as well as modernist industrial design.

I had waited a long time to jump on the SEQTRAK wagon because I am not a beat maker. Beat making is SEQTRAK’s primary use case. I will let the Interweb’s argue the case for and against on that basis.

I will use SEQTRAK as a sound module — no doubt about it. This module has a huge internal library of AWM2, sampled and 4-op DX sounds. (The DX sound set could be a little beefier.) The AWM2 sound set is “MX+” (or “XS+” depending upon your reference point). None of us should have trouble putting the factory sounds to work modulo the MIDI channel restrictions.

As a standalone beat making tool, I can see how the SEQTRAK is somewhat unapproachable. There are small side buttons and connection points. Purpose is sometimes clear (e.g., USB. phones, VOL+, VOL-) and sometimes not (e.g., PAGE, DELETE, PROJECT). Plus, what is that quasi-display in the middle with words that light up? SEQTRAK does include a multi-lingual “Quick Operations Guide” with about 20 pages of instructions and tips. Thank goodness.

I didn’t really get into SEQTRAK until I fired up the SEQTRAK app. Now we’re talkin’. The app is far more relatable and it provides a longer user guide. Thanks to the app and its guide, I understand the track layout, effects structure, project management, etc. I have a long history with Yamaha gear and immediately “got” SEQTRAK as a sequencer and synth.

When I saw MIDI import and export, I decided to convert a some of the old DJX-II patterns to SEQTRAK. After a few minor stumbles, I got reasonably familiar and competent at SEQTRAK conversions. Now my SEQTRAK has several jazzy songs, each song (project) with six different pattern (sets) up to eight bars (the SEQTRAK max) in length. Most importantly, they sound danged good for the money. I could see loading (up to) eight songs and performing a live remix standalone.

SEQTRAK prices have dropped to where a punter shouldn’t hold back — if beat making is your thing. I don’t think SEQTRAK would be the best engine for long, stem-like loops. TE’s EP approach is a better fit for that production process.

Is there a champ?

Is there a champ? That depends on your musical process. Beat makers should be happy with SEQTRAK once they climb the learning curve. Us kids who just want to have fun and are inclined toward stem-like loops will be happier with a TE EP-40 or EP-133 K.O. II. Gratefully, neither device is beastly expensive (about $300 USD each). Both are good value.

Copyright © 2026 Paul J. Drongowski

Review: Yamaha Seqtrak

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Yamaha Seqtrak went on sale last month — at the fantastically low price of $250 USD. OK, that got me. 🙂

By now, there are a mess o’ Seqtrak videos on-line. You’ve probably watched and heard the demonstrations and tutorials. Therefore, I will concentrate on my personal experience and reactions. It will be hard to avoid comparisons to Teenage Engineering EP-40 Riddim and Korg Volca Sample 2. I’ll save comparisons for another day.

Gotta say up front, I am not a beat maker. My beats sound like a 1960s home organ and I ain’t proud of them. That’s why I waited so song to get a Seqtrak. It’s primary advertised use-case is beat making, so I decided to wait until the price fell to impulse level.

The Seqtrak has four very high quality noise making sections; five, if you count the excellent effects. You get:

  • Seven parts (channels) for AWM2 drums/percussion,
  • Two parts for AWM2 synth voices,
  • One part for 4-op FM (a la Reface DX)
  • One part for sampler playback.

If you have the latest updates installed, the seven drum parts can be reassigned to either AWM2 synth or drum kit. That means you can turn Seqtrak into a 9 channel AWM2 sound module with a channel of DX FM.

The factory AWM2 sound set is no slouch. I compared the Seqtrak waveforms against the Motif XS and XF. I would call the Seqtrak an “XS+” — some desirable additions from the XF, but minus Megavoices (like the MX) and the S6 acoustic piano. Seqtrak also gets some of the later digital effects like HD reverb, guitar amp simulators (REAL DISTORTION), compression (UNICOMP), and EDM, hippity-hop sound bashers.

250 bucks is roughly the cost of a mid-range software synth. You would be very hard pressed to find a MIDI sound module with Seqtrak’s capabilities for $250. Forget the General MIDI module crap out of China. Buy a Seqtrak. [Seqtrak is manufactured in Malaysia.] You give up a few channels and you need to live within the Seqtrak’s channel structure. Read the manual.

Seqtrak has a frightening amount of connectivity: USB C, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, MIDI. The MIDI dongle is very weird. Its 3.5mm plug has five (5) contacts; good luck finding one of these things. The dongle works fine and I had Seqtrak working with my Arturia Keylab Essential in nothing flat. Should work fine with the Novation Launchkey, too. Using the Seqtrak app, I programmed nine AWM2 channels and DX with my favorite voices. I then selected among the faves by changing the MIDI send channel on the Keylab Essential.

Another approach is to tag sounds as favorites through the app. Then use the SOUND knob to scroll through your favorite sounds.

Seqtrak as a sound module — check!

The Seqtrak app is a brilliant piece of work. It provides basic AWM2 “quick edits” and full access to effects and effect parameters. The app also has a beautiful FM editor. I intend to build a translation app in order to use the Seqtrak app as an editor for Reface DX. The SysEx is similar between both units.

As I mentioned, I am not a beat maker. That is Seqtrak’s intended market, however. Yamaha shot for a Teenage Engineering aesthetic and hit the mark. On the other hand, the rather sparse appearance of the front panel and buttons left me uninspired and lost. The unit is super-light, which is great until you press those side buttons and Seqtrak slides away. I quickly learned to steady the unit with my thumb, second hand, whatever. Also, I never got into multi-button combinations — why I never played Street Fighter…

This is where the app is not only brilliant, but essential. I spent the last two weeks converting a few DJX-II patterns to Seqtrak and I cannot imagine working without the app. The latest updates (now v2.0) make Seqtrak what it should have been on day one. With only eight project slots, back-up and project management is an absolute necessity.

A few app features got a heavy work-out when converting patterns: MIDI import, mixer, sound assignment, effects editing. The Seqtrak app is very well integrated with the hardware and you can move between on-screen controls and hardware controls without thinking about it. Kudos. As Yamaha recommend, start working with the app and you will eventually learn how to use Seqtrak stand-alone.

My biggest niggle is the same as Teenage Engineering’s Riddim software — font size and contrast. I work on a 4K monitor on Windows 11. By default, Windows wants to display everything at native resolution. Yeah, you can change the scale factor, but that changes the scale factor for all applications. Like TE’s software, I’m reading text with a magnifying glass. Software developers, have your grandmother use your app. If she can’t read the text, fix your app!

Seqtrak is a lot of tech for not very much money. If Seqtrak fits your work-flow and use cases, go for it.

Copyright © 2026 Paul J. Drongowski

EP-40 Riddim: Jammin’ (1)

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Teenage Engineering labelled the EP-40 Riddim “Original Layering Machine.” The Riddim lives up to its mission — jammin’.

The first question I asked is “How are the factory songs?” The EP-40 comes pre-loaded with nine projects:

 #  Abbrev   Artist         Sub-genre                   Key  BPM
--  --------------------------------------------------  ---- ---
 1  JAMMY    King Jammy     Dancehall                   E     85
 2  MPROF    Mad Professor  Dub                         Fmin  86
 3  DRSKL    DRE Skull      Dancehall and electronic    Amin  81
 4  MFLUX    Mafia & Fluxy  Dancehall and reggae        Gmin 134
 5  MPC                     MPC layout                  Fmin  82
 6  RIGO     Rigo Fuego     Electronic dancehall/Latin  A     94
 7  CROWN    Mighty Crown   Reggae and dancehall        Dmin  88
 8  BABY G   Baby-G         Dancehall                   Dmin  71
 9  PO                      Pocket Operator             D     81

TE credits several other artists, but doesn’t associate their names with specific samples or songs. At least their contributions are recognized.

EP-40 has a few different major modes. One of these modes — LIVE STATE — is made for jammin’. You get into LIVE STATE by pressing the [SOUND] and [MAIN] buttons together at the same time. You’ll see “LIV” in the display and the icon next to the MAIN icon will flash.

Teenage Engineering EP-40 Riddim

It’s easy to change the project: Press and hold [MAIN] and a numbered button from [1] to [9]. Hold that number button down! I was “clicking” the number button and then wondering why the project didn’t change. 🙂 If you’re successful, the display will show “P” and the selected project number.

Eventually, you’re going to want to mix and match or play a melody on an external MIDI controller. Here is a table with project key, tempo and chords:

 #  Abbrev     Key  BPM  Chords       Loop sample #'s
--  --------  ----  ---  -----------  ----------------
 1  JAMMY        E   85  | E  |       824 to 835
 2  MPROF     Fmin   86  | Fm | Eb |  849 to 861
 3  DRSKL     Amin   81  | Am | Em |  812 to 823
 4  MFLUX     Gmin  134  | Gm | Dm |  862 to 873
 5  MPC       Fmin   82  | Fm | Eb |  874 to 885
 6  RIGO         A   94  | A  |       886 to 898
 7  CROWN       Dm   88  | Dm | C  |  836 to 848
 8  BABY G      Dm   71  | Dm |       800 to 811
 9  PO          D    81  | D  | G  |

Feel free to mash things together. Reggae/dub typically uses simple chords — no jazz extensions, so don’t get too cute.

Project 9 is kind of a ringer. It’s meant to be a placeholder for your first project (assuming that you don’t want to throw projects 1 to 8 away). The project imitates the sound of a TE Pocket Operator (PO).

You have to take the BPMs with a grain of salt. MFLUX at 134 feels like 67 BPM — it certainly doesn’t feel like trance or garage!

The four basic layers are selected using the [DRUM], [BASS], [MELODY] and [PLATE] buttons on the left hand side of the button matrix. Select a layer and then play the other nine buttons in the 4×4 matrix. You’ll quickly discover a common layout across factory projects. (MPC is an exception and follows the MPC layout.) For example, here are the pad assignments for each layer in the JAMMY project:

Drum Pads
   JAMMY DRMS A 85   JAMMY DRMS B 85    JAMMY DRMS C 85
   JAMMY HH          JAMMY OH           MUD TOM B
   JAMMY KICK        JAMMY RIM A        JAMMY RIM B
   JAMMY FILL A 85   JAMMY FILL B 85    JAMMY FILL C 85

Bass Pads
   JAMMY BASS A 85   JAMMY BASS B 85   JAMMY BASS C 85
   SUPERTONE 6       SUPERTONE 6       SUPERTONE 6
   SUPERTONE 6       SUPERTONE 6       SUPERTONE 6
   SUPERTONE 6       SUPERTONE 6       SUPERTONE 6

Melody Pads
   JAMMY MEL A 85    JAMMY MEL B 85    JAMMY MEL C 85
   SUPERTONE 4       SUPERTONE 4       SUPERTONE 4
   SUPERTONE 4       SUPERTONE 4       SUPERTONE 4
   SUPERTONE 4       SUPERTONE 4       SUPERTONE 4

Spin Plate
   SUPERTONE 8       SUPERTONE 8       SUPERTONE 9
   RIGO FX A         WHAP              DRSKL FX C
   SYREN             WIRE              ONE
   BACKSPIN M        XPLOSION          FOGHORN

The top three buttons are loops. The bottom three drum buttons are fills. The inner bass and melody 3×3 pads play tones. The spin plate 3×3 buttons trigger one shots like sirens. You can use any custom layout, of course. I’ll stick to TE’s convention in order to keep my mind straight.

The looping is neat. The EP-40 keeps loops in sync, so you can switch in and out of loops without dropping the beat. If you prefer to fade a layer in or out, press and hold the layer’s button ([DRUM], [BASS], [MELODY] or [PLATE]) and move the slider.

When the drum layer is selected, you can add extra hits (and fills) while playing a loop. Simply hit one of the lower 9×9 pads.

You have two options when playing a melody: KEYS mode or no KEYS mode. Press the [KEYS] button to enable (or disable) KEYS mode. When KEYS mode is enabled, all 12 number pads play a tone. Disable KEYS mode and the pads behave according to their assignments (e.g., loops, one shots, Supertone, etc.)

If you’re with me so far, everything is kind of dry-ish. We need to add effects and dub this motha out. Drop everything out except the drum layer. Press and hold the [FX] button along with one of the number pads. The display visually animates an effect when the effect is triggered. The default effect is delay (DLY). You’ll hear stutters, repeats, pans and the stock-in-trade deep echo reverb. Some of the effects mess with the stereo field so patch into stereo monitors when possible!

I hope that’s enough to get you started.

TE EP-40 Riddim: Opinion

I’m having fun and I’m happy with the EP-40. Mostly, I’ve played and jammed with the factory projects.

The factory content is pretty darned good (cleanly recorded). One might say, it’s tame when compared to deep, heavily processed dub (fully expressed commercial tracks). On the other hand, simplicity gives us the opportunity to add and mangle as we see fit.

The performance workflow is free and easy. If you like the sound of reggae or dub, you will enjoy the factory songs. You will also appreciate the ability to interact with the prerecorded loops, sirens and other sounds. A reggae enthusiast should be happy if they don’t mind splashing out $300 USD for eight songs.

A reggae or dub song is often built on one or two chords, like the Riddim factory loops. Be prepared to do serious work, however, if you want to write and record more complicated chord progressions. For example, Psalm 95 If Today by Trevor Thomson.

Stay tuned for my experiments with Supertone and Ting. Check out the Riddim and Ting unboxing.

Copyright © 2026 Paul J. Drongowski

TE Riddim and Ting outta the box

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My version of an unboxing video… [Minus the boring video]

Thanks to the folks at Alto Music, I’ve got a brand new Teenage Engineering EP-40 Riddim and EP-2350 Ting bundle.

Unzip that strip!

Both Riddim and Ting arrive in a brown box. Opening the brown box is like tearing into an overgrown Pocket Operator. It feels the same way.

TE EP-40 Riddim and EP-2350 Ting bundle

Riddim and Ting are taped together. The “Free Ting” tape is cute and I saved it. I’ll find something fun to do with it. 🙂

Free Ting and let it loose

Strip off the tape and there you have Ting in its own shrink-wrap. Riddim is shrink-wrapped, too.

TE EP-40 Riddim

The EP-40 ships in a box of its own. No secret, Teenage Engineering is an industrial design studio as much as it innovates consumer electronic devices. The EP-40 box is an example of TE’s sustainable formed paper packaging. Printed graphics reproduce quite well on this stuff.

TE EP-40 formed paper box

TE freely admit that the initial EP-133 packaging led to shipping damage. They learned their lesson. The EP-40 package has pass-through holes for the pot and slider knobs. The holes provide a lot of support around the knobs.

The paper case is good enough for light duty. If you take Riddim out of the studio into a club, you’ll want something stronger, padded and more protective. Still, the packaging is a nifty, visually attractive innovation.

The EP-2350 Ting packaging — printed brown cardboard — looks a bit spartan in comparison. None the less, Ting is well protected during shipping.

The bundle has an R. Crumb inspired reminder to update. Updating Riddim is relatively painless. Connect Riddim to your PC, run Chrome, open the Web-based TE Update Utility, allow the tool access to the Riddim via Web-MIDI, and the Update Utility does the rest.

The Web-based EP Sample Tool is easy to use, too. Like the Update Tool, you must grant access to Riddim over Web-MIDI (USB). This is a great way to explore the factory samples and pad assignments.

The EP Sample Tool does project-specific and full backups. I made a copy of everything because I will eventually toss some of the factory content and install my own construction kits.

The EP-40 Riddim is pre-loaded with nine projects. Eight projects are reggae/dub. The ninth project is a hyper-active P.O. style project — readily tossable unless you are really into P.O. Oh, yeah, the initial factory content occupies 92MBytes leaving 36MBytes free.

My one gripe — TE needs to increase the font size throughout the EP Sample Tool. I have to read sample sizes and free space with a magnifying glass on my 4K monitor. Please.

Love the written word and pictures? Much faster than watching a ten minute unboxing video. 🙂

Copyright © 2026 Paul J. Drongowski

Korg Volca Sample riddim?

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Teenage Engineering wisely got out ahead of everyone and released the EP-40 Riddim and Ting combo just before the holidays (and January 2026 NAMM).

I went absolutely berzerk when I heard the EP-40 and quickly pulled out the Korg Volca Sample 2 to see what I could do. There’s a lot to love about the Sample 2. Its USB port and the Korg Volca Sample Librarian make sample management a snap. The step programmable sample parameters supply a lot of dynamic messin’ along with the tempo and swing knobs. The controls may be small, but I love their immediate accessibility.

The analogue isolator controls are a kick, too. You can dynamically kill or boost the low and high ends. Korg provide similar capabilities in their Volca Mix. That and the compression and stereo field effects are the reason why I keep the Volca Mix in the toolbox.

I wanted to create long-loop grooves as though I was working in Ableton Live. One of my favorite entertainments is to launch Live and drop in a few samples and hear what comes out. The Sample 2 workflow is not as smooth as Live since everything needs to go through the Volca Sample Librarian. Oh, well.

Other issues arise when using long samples (e.g., two or more bars). Lack of sample space is a major issue. The Sample 2 has only 8 megabytes — yes, 8 megabytes — of sample space. The Sample 2 operates at a 31.25kHz sampling rate and it’s not clear if down-sampling saves any space. (The Librarian does sample rate conversion.) An old trick to save space is to “pitch up” incoming samples and then slow them down during playback (returning the sound to its original pitch). This technique adds yet another prep step and buzzkill.

The Sample 2 comes with great factory samples. That’s both good and bad. The factory samples occupy roughly 80% of sample memory leaving you with 20% free. That’s roughly 26 seconds of available user sample time. Sure, you can wipe the factory samples, but really?

I smacked into limited memory capacity immediately. I trimmed several dub loops into 2 to 4 bar loops. None the less, drum, bass, skank and fill loops hit 100% right quick.

Loops longer than two bars trip another issue. Longer loops continue to play after hitting the stop button. This is known behavior and it is annoying. Next, if you want to play a two bar loop, you need to adjust the tempo down to half. That way, one can trick the Sample’s sequencer into thinking it’s a two-bar sequencer. Of course, this spreads the 16 sequencer steps across two bars thereby cutting your time resolution in half (eighth notes). Go for four bars and the resolution is cut to four quarter notes per bar.

Overall, I think Korg conceptualized the Sample 2 (and its predecessor) as a digital beat box to which a user can add short one-shots. In that regard, Volca Sample is quite successful, especially at its price point. It’s not designed for long samples.

I always like to give the gear I have (Sample 2) first shot and buy if necessary. As to EP-40 Riddim and Ting, I’ll have more to say after UPS gets here. 🙂

Teenage Engineering, by the way, are showing Field System Black in time for NAMM 2026. If you want to hear more about TE’s development process, I strongly recommend WVFRM’s interview with David Eriksson, co-founder and lead engineer of TE. If I were teaching today, it would be required for class.

Copyright © 2026 Paul J. Drongowski