Critter & Guitari microphone: a battery-powered electret condenser with a 1/4" output, a fine-tuning gain knob, and high/low ranges so it plays nice with amps, pedals, and synth inputs. Available in a whole rainbow of colors.

Feed them sound, get pictures. The Video Scopes turned any audio signal into wobbly, colorful visuals on a TV or projector, with just Mode and Gain knobs to steer. Three flavors: Video Scope, Rhythm Scope, and a stark Black & White, each with its own look. Plug in a synth, a guitar, or your voice and zone out.

The original Critter & Guitari synthesizer: a maple-keyed handheld with seven synth voices and a built-in speaker, small enough to almost fit in a pocket. Poly and mono modes, a few knobs to bend the sound, and an optional MIDI version that moonlighted as a controller. Long retired, but its descendants are everywhere on this page!

The Bolsa Bass was a portable, battery-powered monosynth devoted to low end: six modes running from clean sine tones to simple FM to stretchy delay-drones, plus a two-octave keyboard and a built-in sequencer for laying down lines and recording your knob wiggles. MIDI-friendly and ready to rumble.

A rare one-off built with Third Man Records: 41 wooden keys, seven modes, seven tones, and a 3-watt speaker in a bent-metal case. Two buttons (and their LEDs) unlock 49 sound combos: arpeggiators, a glitchy slicer, vibrato, glides. Each one remembered as a pair of colors. Wall power or AA batteries, MIDI in and out.

Another Third Man team-up — a tiny, surprisingly loud amp named after the little "third"-size classical guitars. A 4-inch speaker pushing 15 watts off four rechargeable AAs, with three knobs of silicon- and germanium-diode grit for guitar, synth, voice, or even a record player.

Critter & Guitari goes Eurorack. The Melody Mill was a keyboard-and-brain module that sent 1V/oct, gate, and trigger out to drive your modular, with six arpeggiator modes, a sequencer, MIDI, and a square-wave oscillator on board. A friendly melodic front in a patch-cable jungle.

The IIO was a little amp-and-speaker tucked in a gold anodized Eurorack panel: two 1/8" inputs, a volume knob, and 3 watts of sound. Equal parts portable PA and patch-debugging buddy — sometimes you just need to hear the module without wiring up the whole studio.

The 2016 original: a wooden-cased music computer running Pure Data patches, with mappable knobs, keys, and buttons that let it shapeshift into a synth, sampler, or effects box on a whim. Drop new patches on a USB stick and it becomes a different instrument entirely. The start of a long and very beloved line.

A pocket sampler with a built-in mic and speaker, made to grab sound from anywhere and bend it on the spot. Six modes — three to warp speed and pitch, three for effects — let you stack, smear, and reverse little loops, all on batteries with USB-C backup. Tiny, charming, and endless.

The Pocket Piano reborn. Six open-source sound engines: chiptune waveforms, analog filters, drum samples, physical models, even a vocal synth. Plus pattern generators, a sequencer, and MIDI, all under maple keys in a hand-built aluminum box. USB-C or AA batteries, a built-in speaker, and endlessly hackable with Pure Data and Faust.

A five-track pocket recorder for stacking songs and field recordings wherever you happen to be. Loop or one-shot each track, bounce down to keep layering past five, and pull everything into your DAW over USB-C. Roughly 20 hours of 48k/16-bit capture in a little maple-and-PLA box.

Round two of the Organelle: the same Pure Data music computer — synth, sampler, effects — now with 25 maple keys, four knobs, and an OLED for diving into patches. Load new sounds from a USB drive and it becomes whatever you need that day. Since succeeded by today's Organelle S2.