Superbooth 2026: New Gear, Fresh Ideas, One City
Stay up to date with Superbooth 2026 - from May 7 to 9 the Wired Tunes team is broadcasting live from Berlin! We are on the ground to bring you the freshest information about the instruments that are already stirring excitement across the global synthesizer community.
New Gear, Fresh Ideas, One City
Superbooth is the moment when manufacturers from around the world reveal their cards. Our team is making its way through the halls of the FEZ complex in Berlin to test and cover the most interesting premieres. This year Superbooth celebrates its tenth anniversary as an independent platform for manufacturers, musicians, and everyone for whom electronic sound is a form of expression. From analog synthesizers to advanced samplers - here is what caught our attention first.
Hot Premieres of Superbooth 2026
Desktop synthesizer
Buchla Ziggy
Probably the most unexpected announcement ahead of Superbooth 2026. Buchla is a brand primarily associated with expensive and complex modular systems - the iconic Easel retails for around $5,000, while the full Skylab system reaches $15,000. Against that backdrop, a self-contained desktop monosynth priced just under $1,000 looks like a small revolution, though it remains firmly in premium territory by general market standards.
At the heart of Buchla Ziggy sits an analog complex oscillator - the very thing that has always defined the Buchla sound: a sine wave with amplitude and frequency modulation, a timbre wavefolder for adding harmonics, and a modulation oscillator capable of operating anywhere from slow LFO rates up to audio frequencies. Instead of a conventional filter, Buchla Ziggy uses a Low Pass Gate with a Sallen-Key architecture, which can work as a VCA, a filter, or both simultaneously. Envelopes are not traditional ADSR but continuously blended shapes - a deliberate design choice rooted in West Coast synthesis philosophy. On the modern side, there are digital effects (reverb, delay, flanger, pitch-shifter, chorus, distortion), patch saving, over 100 factory presets, and a small screen for navigation. Power comes via USB-C.
Important note: there is no keyboard included. You can use your own MIDI or CV controller, or add the firmowy Buchla LEM218 touch keyboard - available separately or as a bundle. For those who have long wanted to explore West Coast synthesis without diving into a full modular rig, Buchla Ziggy looks like a genuine opportunity. Audio demonstrations are not yet widely available, but community interest is already high - and nothing suggests that enthusiasm will fade once the show floor opens.
Sampler / sound processor
Torso Electronics S-4 (UPDATE)
Danish company Torso Electronics caught the community's attention with the T-1 sequencer, but it is the S-4 that represents its most ambitious project to date. The device is described as a "sculpting sampler" - a four-track sampler built around a granular engine, a suite of effects, and the ability to simultaneously function as a tape machine, live effects processor, and textural synthesizer. That sounds like a wide brief - and in practice the instrument delivers on much of it.
Each of the four tracks runs through a chain of five processing blocks: Material (tape-style or polyphonic sample playback), Mosaic (granular processing with control over grain size, rate, and pitch), Ring (a 48-band resonator plus a morphing filter), Color (distortion, compressor, bit-crusher), and Space (delay, reverb, spatial effects). There is 4 GB of internal storage with support for external USB drives, a built-in microphone, and WiFi for Ableton Link. Modulation options spanning envelopes, LFOs, and generative sequencers make the S-4 considerably deeper than it might appear at first glance.
Torso Electronics has been consistently developing the instrument through regular firmware updates. The 2.0 release shown at Superbooth 2025 brought a rewritten engine, a scene system, and global macros, while version 2.2 currently in beta adds a new time-freeze mode to the Mosaic granular module. The S-4 is aimed at musicians looking for an unconventional approach to live audio processing and creative sound design.
Polyphonic synthesizer
Elta Music Polivoks-8
Latvian company Elta Music has been working with the heritage of the Soviet Formanta Polivoks synthesizer for years - filter units, mono versions, reissues. The Polivoks-8 is a step in a completely new direction: an eight-voice polyphonic analog synthesizer inspired by that same raw Soviet-era character that has been drawing producers to it for decades.
Each of the eight voices features two fully analog oscillators with FM, sync, and ring modulation, plus a dedicated sub-oscillator per voice. The centerpiece is a dual-filter design per voice: the first is an authentic Polivoks-type circuit built around original Soviet OTA chips K140UD12 - aggressive, expressive, and alive - offering 12 dB low-pass and 6 dB band-pass responses. The second is an improved 24 dB ladder filter. Routing between the two is freely configurable: serial, parallel, or any blend in between. Available in desktop or 4U rackmount format, with 1,024 patch memory slots, bi-timbral operation, a built-in arpeggiator, a step sequencer, and an analog joystick for live performance.
Key caveat: Elta Music is presenting a prototype at Superbooth. The price has not been officially confirmed, and audio demonstrations are not yet available. How convincingly a polyphonic Polivoks translates the mono instrument's character into eight voices remains an open question - that kind of conversion does not always deliver the expected result. We are waiting for demos from the show floor.
How to Follow the News
Check the Wired Tunes blog regularly - we will be updating our coverage with every new premiere from Berlin. Follow our social media for live reports straight from the exhibition halls. Sign up for our newsletter to receive a full summary after Superbooth wraps up, including availability updates for new products in our store.
