From Ableton Live to Stockhausen, folks have been generating some hilarious LEGO kits around music making. But leave it to the folks at Rupert Neve Designs, as the 5088 mixer and a ton of studio accessories are part of a real custom LEGO building set, and it’ll be on sale soon.
Neve have been building on this idea since 2021, and each year they one-up the year before. 2021 had the console, yes. 2022 added a reel-to-reel tape machine and a penthouse section. Now there’s 2023’s edition, and it’s huge – well, huge and tiny, that is.
They were meant to go on sale yesterday, but they’re coming soon according to the official site.
- 433 original LEGO elements
- 60 custom-printed parts
- Booklet with detailed assembly
- New bigger monitors (are those Symphonic Acoustics? readers?)
- Split console (as was last year)
- Computer keyboard and computer monitor with stickers for your choice of DAW (can’t see which DAWs are there, as the pic shows just a macOS desktop and wallpaper)
- A tiny Teenage Engineering OP-1
- Made in Berlin, Germany (though it’s a US exclusive, and shipping has caused the availability delay, whoops)
- Limited run of 300
https://rupertneve.com/news/5088-custom-building-set-2023
And the real 5088:
Custom LEGO construction kit maker NuMode makes some other custom jobs, including a TR-808, TB-303, MPC-2000XL, and various turntable items including a detailed stylus and headshell.
I’m especially impressed with this all-LEGO-brick Sennheiser MD 441-U:
You won’t get the same satisfaction from the speculative LEGO kits people are cooking up with machine learning, but you will at least get a chuckle. (And you won’t have to explain to your loved ones why you have a Stockhausen playset, though if there are kids who are into that, respect!)
Tarik O’Regan is just killing it with music nerd LEGO sets – follow him on X:
Elsewhere, can’t find the source, but I appreciate the Ableton Live LEGO kit, and knowing what fans the Abletons are of LEGO bricks (and the LEGO folks are of the Abletons), this should really just happen for real. (The original Push design was famously prototyped by Jesse Terry and team in LEGO bricks, so this is art imitating life imitating, uh, bricks.)
Keep these coming. But you need them for real. Makes me want to sprawl out on the carpet with a bunch of bricks, even as I simutaneousy have the sense memory of stepping on one. (It’s part of the allure, really.)
Updated:
Okay, as you find these, I’m adding more. Via Gregory over at Cycling ’74:
Also, my prompting / image generator isn’t quite as good as whatever people are using for these, so – if someone wants to help me out, please.
Probably better actually to work with these custom LEGO folks and do this for real, not be lazy with the text-to-image. (Plus, you can’t step on an AI and hurt your feet!)