Play Synths With Fruit With the MicroKits Banan-a-Synth: Synth Journal
The best of the rest of this week’s synthesizer news.
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Tired of pressing keys? Press bananas instead to play the MicroKits Banan-a-Synth. Plus an ultra-rare tube synth sampled into a new plugin, more.
Synth Journal
MicroKits Banan-a-Synth
MicroKits is a boutique company that makes synths that are also educational, like its Theremin Kit. MicroKits now has a new instrument on the way called Banan-a-Synth, and it’s up for funding now on Kickstarter.
Banan-a-Synth is a banana-shaped mini synth that reminds me of the company’s Synth-a-Sette in that it has touch sensors. However, it’s a little more involved than that cassette-shaped one in that it offers 12 different instrument sounds, like Electro-String, Funky Synth and Square Wave, plus eight effects including low- and highpass filters, chorus, and 8-bit arpeggio.
And now the educational part: you can also learn about conductivity with Banan-a-Synth by hooking up the included banana clips and playing the Banan-a-Synth via any conductive surface, such as a bunch of bananas.
Banan-a-Synth has already blown past its funding goals many times over. The Super Early Bird and Early Bird prices are all gone, but you can still get one for $60, which is not bad at all. There are still 15 days left to order.
- MicroKits Banan-a-Synth Kickstarter page
Zlosynth Instruments Arplus
Arplus from Zlosynth Instruments is a new Karplus-Strong six-voice resonator for Eurorack. It’s packed with musical scales and chords, with 31 different types of scales that include Western, Arabic, Indian, Japanese, and also quarter, semi, and whole tone scales. You also get a quantizer and arpeggiator with which you can control external modules or the internal string synthesis sound engine.
Speaking of that internal engine, you can use the internal noise burst to excite the resonators, or pipe in an external signal for different results. You can excite up to six notes simultaneously and shape them with the built-in filter that includes cutoff and resonance, along with the Contour control to go from staccato sounds to texture washes.
Additionally, Arplus offers a stereo output, with three stereo spreads: Ping Pong, Root (which places the chord root note on the left and the rest on the right), and Haas.
The 20HP module is available in assembled and kit versions in white and black panel colorways.
- Zlosynth Instruments Arplus product page
Synthesizer Studio Berlin System Flow 2.0
Last year, I profiled five synthesizer museums. One of them was Synthesizer Museum Berlin, a location that also features a recording studio, Synthesizer Studio Berlin. Along with recording music, Synthesizer Studio Berlin also creates music software, like Flow, a granular synthesizer with two grain sample slots for Native Instruments Reaktor.
Flow 2.0, the latest version, sees the software gaining a new sample library of instruments recorded at the studio and museum, including a Roland Jupiter-4, SH-2, and System 700, Sequential Circuits Prophet-10, ARP 2600, a Yamaha CS-80, EMS Synthi AKS, a Moog Minimoog and Memorymoog, and a Broken Oberheim OB-X. These join new ADSR and MPE capabilities, a drone mode, new filters and effects, and more.
System Flow 2.0 is available now for Reaktor 6 for €19.90 on sale, down from €29.90 via the website (link below). It’s Maschine and Komplete Kontrol ready. If you’re going to Superbooth 2026, keep an eye out for the Synthesizer Museum Berlin booth.
- Synthesizer Studio Berlin System Flow 2.0 product page
UltraRare.SU Apparatus
Another just-released piece of software with samples of a rare synthesizer is Apparatus from developer UltraRare.SU. If the name of the instrument sounds familiar, that’s because it’s named after the synth that provided the sounds for the samples: the Russian tube synthesizer, Eternal Engine Apparatus.
We talk a little more about the original release of Apparatus here, but this new software version is a ROMpler based on sampled oscillators taken from the original instrument. Not just duophonic like the original but polyphonic, the Apparatus plugin “allows you to utilize the sound of exclusive tube synthesis on a much more modest budget,” according to the developers.
Apparatus is available in VST and AU formats for both Windows and Mac. It costs 1499 Russian rubles, or approximately $20.
- UltraRare.SU Apparatus Tube Synthesizer product page
Wee Noise Makers Punch, Feed, Play
Lastly, here’s an unusual one. Wee Noise Makers, who you may remember from the PGB-1 portable groovebox, is back with Punch, Feed, Play, an intriguing and rather mysterious forthcoming instrument that’s been teased on Kickstarter with a picture and video (below).
Here’s what we know: there’s a box with two orange knobs, a tiny screen, and a hand crank. According to the company, you can “punch holes in paper to compose your own melodies, feed the strip into the box, and crank.” The video shows this in action, with the device seeming to generate its own sound based on the notes. (Although the song is giving Rick Roll – is this device real?)
I’m curious to learn more, like will Punch, Feed, Play have MIDI out? That would make it really useful. There’s no launch date yet or price.
- Wee Noise Makers Punch, Feed, Play Kickstarter page
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