Buchla USA

This is the official page of the historic electronic musical instrument company Buchla. Buchla Electronic Music Instruments LLC.

(BEMI) formally known as Buchla & Associates, Inc. is a manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, notably modular synthesizers and unique MIDI controllers. The 200e Electric Music Box, Lightning III and the long awaited re-release of the Easel are currently in production.

09/23/2026

Spooky Ziggy (full video on Buchla Youtube)

09/22/2026

When we announced our new instrument Ziggy last May, we estimated that we would be able to ship it this fall. It is almost fall, and while Ziggy is firmly in a production state, we now expect shipping in December.
Why the delay? We showed a very nice prototype in May at Superbooth. It sounded great, satisfying both the physical and sonic design vision. We accumulated a lot of feedback from the public, and the more we worked with that first piece, we gathered our own. It became clear that there needed to be more work to improve signal to noise, cost of build, quality of build, and user experience.
As a result, instead of sending that design to manufacture, we’ve spent the summer re-working the circuit for better sound, ease of manufacture, and better alignment with supply chains. We customized some parts for better feel on the fingers. We made USB audio, MIDI, and power on a single USB-C connection possible. We’ve re-designed the modulations to make them more complete, improved memory usage for more presets, and developed a browser-based editor for both librarian and creative control of Ziggy.
We think it’s time well spent! We’ll be receiving our first articles soon, having just wrapped another round of pre-production prototyping. Ziggy is going to be awesome, and we want to make sure you’ll love it.

09/19/2026

Waltz for Ziggy

06/08/2026

making DUNGEON SYNTH on Buchla Ziggy

06/04/2026

The subtle beauty of Buchla Ziggy's quantized pitch faders!

06/03/2026

Beatmaking on Buchla Ziggy!

06/02/2026

Buchla Ziggy gets DIRTY!

05/08/2026

You've probably seen lots of wild sounds coming from Ziggy at Superbooth. That's nice, but it doesn't really give you much of a clue of how Ziggy works. So to give you a clear idea of the basics of how you add modulations and build a sound, we made an informative tutorial. What better sound to start with than a phat bass? Here, the MIDI controller is hooked up directly through MIDI TRS, and Ziggy is powered by a USB power brick. The Cycler adds modulation to the oscillator frequency, the xLFO adds filter modulation by controlling envelope level, we find a nice envelope shape using Ziggy's unique control, and add a bit of distortion with the effects.

05/07/2026

We're excited that our Kickstarter project was recognized as "loved" by the Kickstarter team. Despite being nearly production ready, we ran a Kickstarter in addition to all the other outlets because we want to make sure we have what's needed to ship in a few months. There's a lot of volatility in making things these days, and Kickstarter is a wonderful way to help smooth that out. Check out the story at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/buchla/ziggy-a-new-instrument-from-buchla

05/06/2026

What's Ziggy all about anyway? Here's one attempt at explaining :) It'll at least get you started! Come say hello - we're in the space themed Orbital room. Wander the maze - you'll find us eventually!

Address

4210 Holden Street
Emeryville, CA
94608

Website

http://www.buchla.com/

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