Twisted Electrons hapiNES

If you're here you probably want to watch the creator's youtube tutorial first , it's really short and it showcases really well almost all the features this little machine has. Crispy triangle waves, noisy drums and hi-hats and arpeggiated PWM waves that will make you reminisce about the good ol' times of 8 bit consoles. Just google "Twisted-Electrons hapiNES Walkthrough" and give it a watch.

Sound 4/5: I have no complains about the sound quality itself, but the maximum volume is really low, and it can be tricky to get to hear things if you're in a noisy environment, Being a portable groovebox you might want to play with it in a bus, train or any other noisy place, but that can become a challenge due to the low volume.

Characteristics 5/5: You really have a lot of stuff to try with this, over 50 drum sounds including a random drum with customizable noise pitch and noise amount, arpeggiator, vibrato and PWM control over the square waves, transposing, key chaining and sequence chaining... nice! You have a few tempo settings but you can sync it with other gear, such as Pocket Operators, Korg Volca or your sync-capable MIDI controller. Talking about MIDI, It does have MIDI input, but only via USB-MIDI, and if you're not picky with the tempo you can use the input jack to mix your chip beats with external music.

Operation 4/5: My biggest issue is the amount of features packed in just a few buttons and knobs, with no other aid than the user manual (just a sheet) to remember (e.g. swing control, shortening sequences...) Personally I'd have preferred a little more silkscreen text in the board to help remember stuff, but it might have gotten a little cramped.

Craft(? Sorry the form is in my own language and I'm not sure how are the different ratings called in English) 5/5: You have a slightly thicker than usual printed Circuit Board in your hands with Hapines. most the circuit is hidden in the reverse side under a couple more PCBs, a good measure to avoid issues with sweaty hands, as someone who respects electricity I'm thankful about that. I tend to be really careful with PCB based synths but Hapines feels more sturdy than average, everything looks well in place and it's not gonna break anytime soon.

Price/performance 5/5: For a hundred euros this is a nice, cheap machine for NES and chiptune enthusiasts. I would call it a neat "toy" but the quality of sounds and the ability of control each track separately via midi makes it way better than what you'd expect from a toy.

PS: If you absolutely need a metal enclosure, better buttons or your usual MIDI-in, there's a new model of this synth coming out in March 2019 called hapiNES L.

PSS: I got a weird bug where some empty sequences had a drum beat in one of the 16 steps that couldn't be replaced by a rest, making the whole sequence silent, but it can be fixed entering live recording mode and pressing rest to delete the entire sequence. Weird.