Opening the Butchery

About half a year has passed since we unleashed the Hog — a fully analog DIY mono synth focused on simplicity. After experiencing some unexpected success with it, now we do what any sensible synth nerd would do: grab a hacksaw and chop it up. Sounds brutal, but who said building synths is not brutal. It is brutal.

How we got here

The Hog started as a side project. An experiment. For three years, it was our playground for learning electronics, physical product design, synth architecture — and figuring out how the hell all that fits together in the real world. Flame and I both have jobs and families, so this was strictly a late-night, weekend sort of thing. No business plans, no financial goals, we just wanted to make something cool.

Late last year, we finished the first five Hogs but we didn’t really have a plan beyond sharing the design files for anyone who wanted to build their own. So without any big hopes I posted a few pics, the links to shmoergh.com and the GitHub repo in some DIY synth groups — and that was that. Or so I thought.

The amount of praise and love we received was totally unexpected — and frankly, kind of shocking. People loved it. The look, the fact that we built a complete product at home, the open source angle. The Hog got picked up in synth magazines, reviews and blogs as a DIY project to watch in 2025. My behind-the-scenes post ended up on Hacker News and got an amazing response. People commented, sent us messages, and asked how they could get a Hog.

We truly didn’t expect any of this and had no idea what to do with it. The Hog was never designed to be a commercial product. It was an experiment, a learning tool. A lot of the critical components are pretty exotic and hard to source, the final build needs tons of hand soldering and careful tuning… all of which makes the Hog a very advanced DIY project. And to turn it into something we could actually sell would mean a full redesign, compromises on the original concept, and a massive financial investment.

Also, some great feedback started coming in, and it made a lot of sense. People who tried the Hog said it sits in a weird spot: not quite plug & play, but also not deep enough for serious sonic exploration. It's stuck somewhere in the middle. That got us thinking: what if we took the Hog and leaned into one of those directions? Go extremely simple, or go deeper?

Enter the Hog Moduleur

We decided to go deeper first. So, lovely people — say hello to our next project: the Hog Moduleur. A spinoff of the original Hog, based on its circuits and design, but chopped up into individual modules. A fully analog patchable synthesizer that allows exploring synthesis in depth and is much-much simpler to build at home.

We plan to blog the journey from zero to finish, and share everything as we go, so you can watch the system grow or even build your own, along with us.

Here's the plan.

1. We'll release one module at a time – power supply, VCOs, VCAs, envelope generators and so on – in the order a full analog synth takes shape.
2. The Hog Moduleur will be much easier to build than the original Hog. We're designing it with different levels of DIYers in mind.
3. Once all the modules are out, there will be a full kit with extras that bring the Hog vibe alive in its new form. Just wait for it...

We've set up a dedicated page for the Hog Moduleur where we'll be collecting all the materials, schematics and design files.

Oh, and ultimately we plan to make a small batch for sale too, just to see how deep we want to go into the whole synth-biz rabbit hole.

Coming up: something to hold the modules in

Okay, before starting to cut fingers and inhale solder fume 24/7, we need something to mount the modules in. So, step zero is to design a simple 3D printable Eurorack compatible frame. That's what we're working on right now — stay tuned.

Thanks again for all the love and support. This has been a ton of fun so far already and we're just getting started.

Cheers,
Zimo