Vibe coding is remaking low-cost music gear with custom firmware

Cheap synths and grooveboxes are getting new features fast as communities use LLM tools to write firmware and hacks.

LLM-assisted “vibe coding” is rapidly changing the hardware music gear scene by making custom firmware and hacks for synths, samplers, and pedals much easier to build, even on cheap or older devices. The clearest example is the $70 M-Vave FM-1, a Yamaha DX-7 clone that now has dozens of community firmwares and has grown from a basic clone into a machine with multiple synth engines, sequencing, and different UI designs. Another big project is Modded Cycles, where 18nelli used Claude Code to add six-track audio over USB to Elektron’s Model:Cycles, and the project has since expanded into a broader modding community with multiple firmware variants. Not every manufacturer is happy with this trend: Elektron has banned links to custom firmware on its forums and warned that unofficial changes can brick devices or cause problems with future OS updates, while M-Vave has leaned in with FM1 Open, an open-source firmware, a dev kit, and a flashing tool.