@Jukka mentioned this in the Superbooth '24 thread, but more details are starting to emerge:
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I like to imagine the product development went something like this.
“Okay guys close your Macbooks it’s time to develop something new.”
Everyone closes their Macbooks, but George, who’s in the middle of putting together a really dope melody on his Stylophone. They decide to continue on piecing together their creation, as he’s been at it for the past 45 minutes, and doesn’t want to lose the moment of inspiration. He places his trusty Gen X-1 on top of his closed Macbook and keeps at it. At the same time across the table Tony is unpacking his latest delivery, a pair of contact mics he hopes to get some sweet results with when he plugs them into his setup later. The product manager seeing this, is at first annoyed by George’s melody and his lack of attention. Tony also seems to be deeply enthralled with inspecting his contact mics, but upon seeing the bosses glare places them down on top of his closed Macbook, and soon proceeds to unconsciously fidget with them to the rhythm of George’s Stylophone pen tapes. The product manager stares at the two for a second and as he begins to address George’s lack of attention on the meeting at hand, an idea strikes.
“George! Tony! Don’t stop what you’re doing!” Startled at first, George and Tony freeze, however they soon continue their motions when the PM eagerly motions to them with his hands to keep going. After 45 seconds of the room staring in confusion at George and Tony’s sporadic ballet of hand movement, the PM shouts with glee.
“That’s it! Someone get me a dry erase marker and the whiteboard!”
At least that’s how I see it.
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This is simultaneously immensely stupid and (as a drone head) mildly intriguing. The sounds are cool. But that’s balanced against those sounds being hidden behind the kind of unnecessary quirkiness of some of Soma’s less practical products, but without the ridiculous visual aesthetic that lets them get away with it. The fact that (as someone noted on another site) you basically play it with fiddly wired up fridge magnets is mildly off-putting. And that you have to tune it with a fucking screwdriver is deranged. All together it feels like an exercise in originality-for-the-sake-of-it ridiculousness. If it’s VERY cheap I might be tempted to buy one to play with for an afternoon. But no doubt it wont be very cheap…
Having actually seen this used live by its creators (before the commercialization was announced, but I’m pretty sure that’s them doing the work and the voiceover in the above videos), I think that it is best seen as an elaboration of a theremin. It will sound good in the hands of someone who has practiced a lot, but there is going to be a steep learning curve. And, yes, it is not going to be cheap. Either of those alone would doom it for me (I do not object to steep learning curves, but I want more diverse outcomes as payoff).
I had expected the tuning to be fixed. The screws are not a terrible solution. If you want to develop the muscle memory to play this effectively, you can’t be fucking with the tuning every day. Set it and work with it for an extended period.
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Hmmm…having looked at the Passepartout Duo performances with it, I’m .just not sure I feel for this one. But will be interesting to see it more widely out in the wild in the hands of others
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Hello all!
Writing here as the designer of the Chromaplane - we announced tiered pricing today for our Kickstarter campaign starting July 23rd:
Super Early Bird (limited availability): €299
Early Bird (limited availability): €319
Kickstarter Price: €359
Thank you for your interest!
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That’s actually a very decent price, all things considered!
Happy to hear it 
Glad to see this price! It will definitely help with sales.
Had the opportunity to try one out last week. It took me about 10 minutes to fully grasp the features and get comfortable with it. I don’t own any instruments similar to this, so I see it fitting well into my current setup as a machine that will be sampled. Very excited for this release. The price is perfect imo.
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I’m fascinated by your performances (watched a few times, fantastic!) - but i’ve no idea what’s actually going on.
Is the plate working as a grid of notes, triggered by magnets in the handheld widgets you touch it with? Is the Chromaplane a controller for modular gear? Or a standalone instrument, or both? Thanks!
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Thank you for taking a listen! 
The instrument is a standalone synth, not so much a controller - you can indeed think about it as a grid of notes. I think the best way to get a taste for what it sounds like just on its own is the longer demo video at the top of the thread.
The things we’re holding are electromagnetic pickups - so the instrument is really about detecting electromagnetic fields. You don’t need to touch the instrument with these to play it, it’s just at its maximum intensity when the pickup is directly on the surface. There’s not really any permanent magnets involved by the way. The instrument will also work with any electromagnetic pickups, not just those standard black ones.
As for our performances, we’re playing on the original prototypes, which were actually way more limiting - we used the Chromaplane as the main voice of those pieces, and then manipulate them through audio effects in Ableton (mainly looping and delays).
We’ve put some more info together here regarding the Kickstarter and everything:
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For those who it may concern…
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Hainbach points out something about the tuning by screws that I hadn’t considered: because there’s no global transpose, one can’t change keys quickly.
I think you could do that with their maxforlive patch, if I remember correctly.
Where are you seeing details about their MaxForLive patch? Hainbach only mentions it as being in development. (I would not want to have to hook up a laptop to get this functionality, but others may have it already at hand, I understand.)
In their video right before the kickstarter.
It’s not a maxforlive patch but a software by itself it seems.
