Patchblocks Launches minijam studio Kickstarter Campaign

Exploring the tek.drum Published on Apr 2, 2017 Patchblocks

Kickstarter campaign here.

"Mindflood Ltd., the company behind the Patchblocks brand, was founded back in 2013. It was a result of the academic research of Sebastian Heinz, the founder, CEO and CTO. During his research he developed the idea to Patchblocks and brought it to a prototype state, which ended up to be the content of the first Kickstarter campaign (12/2013). This became one of the most successful synthesizer campaigns on Kickstarter.

In 2014 Sascha Goetz, an old high-school friend of Seb, joined the company as co-founder and started to take care of the all operational tasks. From then on Patchblocks were promoted heavily on key trade shows and many events all over Europe. That allowed the team to build a global retail and distribution network, as well as extending the Patchblocks product line. Those extensions are the Midiblock (2015), which enables connectivity with MIDI equipment and the Keyblock (2016), a miniature Midi Keyboard, which can directly be connected to the Patchblocks.
Besides the new minijam studio (details below) there was also a brand new 3-channel mixer added to the product portfolio. PBMIX3 is a battery powered, portable audio mixer with send and return chain.

For the minijam, the project team was extended by Filip Vandueren (Sounddesign), Andy Wilson (Engineering), Gnichi Mohamed (Engineering) and Carsten Bellan (Design consultant).

The company currently has its main office in Holywood, just outside Belfast, Northern Ireland.

minijam studio
The project started in early 2016 with the idea of creating something that still follows the Patchblocks philosophy in terms of accessibility, affordability and fun. Feedback from customers and retailers pointed to something more hardware, less software. The result was not just one single unit, it ended up in a whole product line, which combines a lot of different studio hardware in a small size.

minijam is based on the idea of what happens when you boil down a hardware studio or live performance setup to very compact and affordable products. Maybe compromising pro-features, but not compromising the enjoyment of noodling and jamming with such machines.

The studio includes a drum machine, a wavetable synthesiser, an analog filter, a mixer and a speaker. It gives you the feel of jamming with hardware equipment, all bundled in a ready-to-use set with impressive sound.
Each device is powered by a rechargeable battery and can be used standalone or as part of the set. You don’t need any software or mobile phone. The mixer keeps all connected devices synchronised and also allows for the integration of other hardware with it’s sync triggers on the second channel of the stereo connectors. (e.g. Pocket Operators, Volcas,etc.)

Product details
tek.drum - Drum Machine:
8 Drum-Synthesis tracks with 4 parameters per track
8 Patterns with 16 steps
automation and parameter locks of all 32 parameters
pattern chaining up to 128 steps
global delay send effect
save patterns and automation to flash
up to 12h battery life (rechargeable via Micro USB)
Dimensions (l/w/h): 15.5 x 6.5 x 3.2 (cm), Weight: 100g
Kickstarter price 45.00 GBP (MSRP 60.00GBP)

tek.waves - Wavetable Synthesizer
16 fully automatable sound parameters divided into 4 pages
3 wave table banks (vowel, classic, harmonic)
arpeggiator with hold, octave range and arp mode settings
4 patterns with up to 128 steps per pattern
scale select, and 2 octave keyboard within selected scale
global delay send effect
save patterns and automation to flash
up to 12h battery life (rechargeable via Micro USB)
Dimensions (l/w/h): 15.5 x 6.5 x 3.2 (cm), Weight: 100g
Kickstarter price 45.00 GBP (MSRP 60.00GBP)

tek.filter - Analog Filter
audio input and output
2 pole resonant low-pass / band-pass filter
up to 40h battery life (rechargeable via Micro USB)
Dimensions (l/w/h): 11.5 x 6.5 x 3.2 (cm), Weight: 65g
Kickstarter price 40.00 GBP (MSRP 50.00GBP)

.hub - 3 Channel Mixer
3 mono channel input with sync trigger output per channel (stereo cable)
digital encoder and display to set tempo
44.1kHz 16bit .wav recording to micro SD card
up to 8h battery life (rechargeable via Micro USB)
Dimensions (l/w/h): 14.0 x 6.5 x 3.2 (cm), Weight: 95g
Kickstarter price 45.00 GBP (MSRP 60.00GBP)

.boom - Portable Speaker
small, battery powered speaker
integrated 3.5mm audio cable
Dimensions (dia/h): 5.0/7.0 x 6.0(cm), Weight: 130g
Just included in the set

The whole studio will be priced with 130.00 GBP on Kickstarter (MSRP 170.00 GBP).

Double Studio, one for you & one for a friend 250.00 GBP on Kickstarter.

All units will be shipped by September 2017.

There are also 100 limited Early bird Kits for 99.00 GBP and 40 pre-production sets for 150.00 GBP (shipping in May 2017)."