Plinky 12: One Device, Three Touch Instruments

April 23, 2026 by Little Music

Alex Evans, the creator of the original Plinky synthesizer, has teamed up with Making Sound Machines and Toadstool Tech to announce Plinky 12 - a 12-inch square touch instrument built around one interesting idea: the same hardware can become three very different instruments depending on which panel you attach.

Plinky 12 touch synthesizer

The Hardware

The device is built around a 16×16 grid of RGB pressure-sensitive capacitive touch pads on an RP2350 microcontroller. The body is just 12mm deep, which makes it more of a surface than a box. On board you get a stereo microphone, an accelerometer, four tactile side buttons, and an SD card slot for samples, presets, and panel states. Connectivity covers audio in and out, MIDI in and out, USB for power and firmware, and two CV input/output pairs - enough to fit comfortably into a modular or hybrid setup.

All three panels share the same synthesis engine, which converts samples into frozen wavetables and adds ADSR envelopes, filters, reverb, delay, chorus, and wavefolding on top. There are no physical knobs - everything happens through touch gestures on the pad grid.

Three Panels, Three Instruments

Swapping panels requires a screwdriver, and the software adapts automatically with no firmware changes needed. Each panel was developed by a different team, which is reflected in how differently they approach the instrument.

Chords, designed by Making Sound Machines, is built for harmonic improvisation. It gives you 12-voice polyphony split between six chord voices and six melody voices, 13 palettes each containing 45 chords, a polyphonic arpeggiator with 32×16 step patterns, and a 128-step sequencer with shuffle.

Toadstep, a collaboration with Toadstool Tech, turns Plinky 12 into a 4-track step sequencer aimed at funky riffs and acid-style lines. Per-step controls cover slides, probability, velocity, gate length, randomisation, step repeating, and ratcheting, with pattern chaining of up to eight patterns per track.

Blocks, made by Evans himself, is the most open of the three. It offers a 6-stringed play surface, a clip launcher, and an XY pad. Each clip can hold a full 128-step polyphonic sequence. Blocks is also compatible with Monome Grid, and comes with a browser-based coding environment for building custom controllers on top of the hardware.

Release

Plinky 12 is being shown at Superbooth 2026 and is targeting a summer 2026 release. It will be sold preassembled. No pricing has been announced yet.

Plinky 12 panel detail

The original Plinky built a dedicated following for its expressive touch interface and distinctive sound character. Plinky 12 takes that same approach and multiplies it across three collaborators, each with a different musical vision. Whether that results in a coherent instrument or a very flexible one probably depends on which panel you put on first.