Plinky 8-voice polyphonic touch synthesiser V3

Plinky is an 8-voice polyphonic touch synthesiser that specialises in fragile, melancholic sounds.

I built this myself from the DIY kit in July 2024.

As you will see from the photos, I have had a case printed for it - the dimensions and specifics of which were as recomended by the skillful tech heads on the most excellent Plinky Discord. This is easily removeable if you don't want the protection for portable Plinky play, or if you prefer to put Plinky into your eurorack set up.

As well as fitting into 24HP eurorack cases, Plinky can also be played as a standalone,desktop mini-synth over CV or MIDI, with line-level stereo input and a headphone output, all powered by USB.

Product DetailsPlinky Plinky V3:

You've seen it on feeds across the world wide web: PPlinky is an 8 voice expressive polyphonic touch synthesizer that specializes in fragile, melancholic sounds, designed by mmalex. Think of it as an 8 stringed instrument, arranged in 8 vertical monophonic strips. You can play Plinky straight away with those 64 main pads. Plinky can be used either as a standalone desktop instrument or can be mounted inside a Eurorack case as a 24HP module.

The kit comes with the software already programmed and all the small SMD parts already presoldered. All other parts you need are included in the box, you just need to provide tools and the solder. Papernoise design made a special edition back panel illustration for Plinky that comes with every new kit. Papernoise designed the Mutable Instruments, Hexinverter Edition Noire, ChronoBlob & Rabid Elephant panels. Free sticker too!

Each of the 8 strings on Plinky has:

• 4 oscillators or sampler grains, detuned by the movements of your fingers
• A white noise generator
• Two ADSR envelopes
• A resonant 2-pole low-pass gate
• Distortion

Plinky also has global delay, reverb, high pass filter and saturation units along with a simple mixer, arpeggiator, sequencer and sampler. The row of 8 shift keys (blue LEDs) along the bottom are used in conjunction with the main pads to select parameters, presets, sequencer patterns, and samples. Plinky also supports 4 external CV modulation sources, each with their own LFO.

Plinky was designed and released in 2021, but was then forced out of production due to the global chip crisis. In cooperation with Plinky’s creator mmalex, in 2024 Thonk and Making Sound Machines are bringing back the new and improved Plinky v3 Kit.

Plinky v3 integrates a TRS MIDI input and output directly on-board, so it’s now possible to sequence polyphonic chords externally and expressively play a melodic line on top. This new revision also improves the DIY build experience, making Plinky an even more easy-to-assemble DIY build. The USB connections have been updated to USB-C and the v3 circuit also improves the noise level on the inputs.

Best of all, Plinky is now open-source, with improvements and contributions from the Plinky community and PCB contributions from Making Sound Machines, TiNRS, Okyeron and LPZW. 

You can power Plinky by either connecting it to your Eurorack power (it requires a 5V connection) or USB (although it is best not to power through both at the same time). For connecting USB you can use either one of the connectors on the front or the back (but again, don’t use both at the same time!).

Plinky Standalone Dimensions: Width 12cm, Length 13cm, Height 2cm