Chompi Club sampler and looper is shipping now

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Chompi Club is a new cute portable Daisy-powered sampler and looper inspired by hands-on vintage such as the Casio SK-1.¨

Good news for the end of the year: the Chompi Club sampler is ready and is shipping to the Kickstarter backers. The first ones have already received the units.

Chompo Club will be available in their official shop in January 2024. 

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Article From April 1, 2023

Update: Chompi Club is now on Kickstarter, and crazy, it has hit already the $1 million mark on Kickstarter

We need more hardware samplers. Instead of more and more monophonic analog synthesizers, many musicians would be happy about a larger market of live samplers with which you can quickly capture sounds and do sound design on the go. The iPhone or iPad has shown that it is even possible in a mobile device in the form of an app.

With the Wofi, Kiviak Instruments presented a new sampler with granular that will soon be on the market. Another popped up this week. And it’s one from the cute corner.

Chompi Club

CHOMPI Club

CHOMPI Club is an upcoming hardware sampler built on the powerful and versatile Daisy platform by Electro-Smith. It’s also open-source, so users can easily extend the engine with new features. According to the developer, it was inspired by childhood devices such as the Casio SK-1. These are known to have a straightforward way of working.

What the developers have created is anything but a replica of the classics. It has a unique design, which is striking because of its cuteness and toyish character. Plus, it has something magical: no classic keys but big buttons, big knobs, and a 2-octave with clacky MX Cherry switches. They alone sounds lovely. Oh yes, there is no screen.

Chompi Club

Engine

A newly developed engine runs on the Daisy platform, offering sampling, tape-style looping, and multi-effects. CHOMPI’s sample engine can handle up to 7 voices of polyphony and has an internal recording time of over 6 hours. There are 40 slots for presets. That’s solid.

The sampler engine has various parameters to tweak, including playback speed and direction, fixed start and end points, and AD envelope. Besides this, you have single-knob effects with filters, lo-fi effects, and granular reverb and delay effects. Not sure yet how versatile these effects are.

Then there is also a tape Looper offering sound-on-sound looping with transport controls, scrubbing, playback speed, and direction. The developers put a particular focus on playability, speed, and workflow. With a push on the CHOMPI button, you can sample in the device and edit them on the fly with the other one-knob features.

Chompi Club

CHOMPI Club is powered by USB-C, has a built-in microphone (w/ High Gain Pre-Amp), and an SD card slot. Whether there is internal memory is not known. It has a stereo line input and output, headphones, and MIDI support on the connectivity side.

First Impression

At first glance a very exciting instrument. A big yes for more samplers. And if they are so unique in the design, an even bigger yes. From the first demo, I really like the workflow. Very simple and perfect for performances. That the Chompi is open-source is the icing on the cake. In this way, the OS community can develop new engines for it, with which the device can be made even more extensive or transformed into a completely new one. Very tempting.

Chompi Club will arrive on Kickstarter on the 28th of March, 2023, for an early bird pre-order price of $499 (retail $599).

More information here: CC 

Hardware Sampler News

14 Comments

  1. Too close for comfort to the Organelle. Two octaves, four knobs. Instead of a screen you get three more buttons and more LEDs. Even pricing is similar.

    • Meh…trade off, stereo sampling ability vs screen. Organelle is a tad more $. This wigit looks to be a bit more user playable for live situations. The Organelle seems a bit more rugged in design. 1/2 doz., etc.

  2. Cool looking, nice workflow …. but big OOOPs on that price. Well for 200-250 maybe, but 500E … well, I wish them luck.

  3. Glad the campaign went well, I really like this thing and would be interested in future products even if it’s out of my current price range

  4. Wow, what a success. I dont know of too many Kickstarter campaigns but I can remember that the Koma Field Kit also went very well. I think rather small instruments /music machines go very well. If I had a synth company I would go in that direction. Built something small and something that is very well designed and something that does a little more than simple drone synths, maybe add some of the Soma/Vlad Kreimer and Ciat Lonbarde/Peter Blasser mystique and succes will be yours. And I have to second the first commentator. It really just looks so nice that it does not matter what it does. It is just charming.

  5. The board is $27 Daisy seed from electro-smith. I estimate that other BOM including housing, knobs, keys can be up to $250 when a customer buys each components separately. Design, firmware and assembly could take account for the rest $200. so I think the price CAN be justified by the cost.

    of course it is arguable that whether the VALUE justifies that price. I backed the crowdfunding ’cause I could tinker with the software(it seems that the board can be reprogrammed via Arduino IDE) and make my own synth/sampler or even a guitar multieffect with a decent hardware.

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