Teenage Engineering EP-40 teardown

I’m obsessed by all things Teenage Engineering. I love their playful approach to making technical hardware, and their design aesthetic of Braun-meets-Lego makes me want to buy everything they make. It’s dangerous.

They got me again with the EP-40 Riddim Synthesizer and EP-2350 Ting microphone. I read this awesome article about how the product was designed using as many off-the-shelf components as possible during the pandemic supply chain shortages and thought it was a cool strategy. The end product is gorgeous.

So, yeah, I’m weak and ended up purchasing the Riddim and justified it as a fun way to teach my son how to make music, but it’s mostly for me to play with. I learned a ton by tearing this down, and I’m very excited to show some really clever designs in our latest informal teardown.

For starters, if you’re interested in a full step-by-step video overview, look no further:

Bonkers for buttons

The EP-40 Synthesizer is a slab of plastic with some colorful knobs and buttons and a display stretching across the entire width. It looks a bit like an oversized calculator or a sci-fi movie prop. I wanna touch all of the buttons. I love it. 

Pad printing is used to add logos and text to each button, meaning that they only needed to mold a few parts and choose different colors and prints to create this wide variety of button types.

One very cool feature on this synthesizer is the pressure-sensitive technology used on some of the keys. To achieve the pressure-sensitive capabilities, the switch is mounted on top of a force-sensitive resistor, which is integrated into the PCBA. A very fine copper trace zigzags across the underside of the switch, and pressing down on the switch ever so slightly deforms this zigzag. The result is a change in the resistance of this trace, which can be read by the microcontroller and used to determine how much force is being applied to the switch.

Lego love

I freaking love Lego — it’s literally the main reason I became a mechanical engineer. I immediately noticed a few features on the EP-40 while playing around with it that brought me back to my childhood:

• The sides of the device feature a handful of holes that work with Lego Technic pins, allowing you to connect multiple devices together or to make custom attachments.
• Removing the rubber foot from the rear housing leaves with you with a square that perfectly fits into a standard Lego 2×2 brick. Hell yes.
• If you pull off the knobs from the device, you’re left with a Lego Technic standard plus-sign-shaped shaft, allowing you to connect gears and wheels and whatever else you can imagine. The knobs themselves are also Lego studs.
• The removable battery and speaker covers are fully Lego-compatible and allow you to create custom covers.

But wait, there’s more

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Taking this little gem apart also revealed neat rubber parts, cool ways to connect terminals and speakers, a fun and playful LED panel, and lots of clever design tricks. 

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