NOTE : Now that M-Vave has started their on-line support for firmware modification by customers, this post is now allowed under Elektronaut policy. ( See this reference post. )
Let the fun begin.
Frmware modifications are available now via Claude. With this units high capabilty and low cost, it seems prime for this sort of experimentation.
Here’s a video showing some options. ( Seems some very modest entries, i’d expect better as this ramps up. ) This demo is more or less someone just banging on things, without thinking about being musical.
The hardware is inexpensive enough to have two or three alternate versions all set up before a performance
From the notes with this video :
Makkuro37: a new firmware made for the SMK-37 from scratch. A microtonal drone synth with 8 voices, each a little soot creature on the screen that wakes up and sings. 96 presets, just / Pythagorean / 24-TET / maqam / gamelan tunings, a CHAOS pad, a filter on every knob.
Snoop37: SLOOP by isod89 with the SMK’s extras: velocity keys and pads in the track colours, a pad sound picker, fader banks (level, filter, reverb, delay), pitch and mod wheels.
X0X37 and FoMni37: Charles Vestal’s fm1-x0x (909, 808, two 303s) and fm1-fomni (Omnichord-style, the pads are the strum plate).
Port kit: the SMK-37 board layer plus a step-by-step guide to port any FM-1 firmware, written so you can follow it with a coding assistant like Claude. The FM-1 build stays byte-identical, so the SMK target can live upstream. I’m sending the ports to their maintainers as pull requests. Install from the browser over USB (Chrome / Edge) and switch between firmwares in about a minute:
Watch this space.
( I’m reporting, not advocating. )