JoMoX previews Transcendor, a tactile FM synth for performance art

JoMoX’s Transcendor is the kind of prototype that makes vintage synth people stop scrolling. It comes from Jürgen Michaelis, the builder behind a catalog that includes the XBase, MBase, Sunsyn, T-Resonator and more, but this one is not chasing nostalgia. It is chasing interaction, with fingertip sensors, antennas, wireless control and a design meant for collaborative art rather than a single player parked behind a keyboard.

Michaelis previewed the Transcendor at Superbooth 2026 at FEZ-Berlin, where the instrument was shown in a video demo of its sonic possibilities. JoMoX frames the company as “Experimental Sound Objects by Jürgen Michaelis,” and that line fits here better than any polite label like “new synth.” The Transcendor appears to be an FM machine, but not in the usual rack or desktop sense. Sonic State’s coverage described it as blending ideas from JoMoX’s Mod FM with a formant filter, then pushing sound through the interaction of sensors and antennas. Multiple performers can trigger it with fingertip sensors, while several LFO applications shape filters and noise in real time.

That matters because it borrows from classic hands-on instrument design while also breaking with it. The borrow is obvious in the physical control, the live feedback, the sense that the sound changes as you touch and move around the instrument. The break is just as clear: this is not built around a fixed voice architecture, a row of presets, or the one-player keyboard ritual that defined so much electronic hardware history. It looks closer to an installation piece that can be played, rather than a synth that happens to be portable.

The portability is real, too. The prototype is powered by a power bank and can communicate wirelessly to a central station, which makes it easier to imagine in gallery spaces, immersive rigs, or a stage setup built around several players instead of one. That design logic also lines up with JoMoX’s older, stranger boxes. The T-Resonator II, for example, used analog stereo filters and digital stereo delay in feedback loops, with envelope follower and sine LFO modulation. The company’s Mod FM D is a self-contained 8-voice FM synth with 4 operators per voice, 2 LFOs/VCOs per voice, analog filters and analog VCAs per voice, plus MIDI TRS type A and USB-C. The earlier Eurorack Mod FM carried the same 8-voice, 4-operator core.

JoMoX’s hardware lineage runs deep enough to give this prototype context. The first XBase09 shipped in December 1996, and the machine stayed in production from 1996 to 2005. By the time Superbooth 2026 rolled around, that was nearly 30 years of instrument building behind the name. Sonic Talk has called Michaelis the creator of some of the most essential JoMoX machines, and Transcendor feels like it belongs in that same eccentric family, even if it is still only a prototype.

For now, that is the right way to read it: not as a finished product, but as a serious signpost. If JoMoX follows through, Transcendor could become a real evolutionary branch for performance hardware. If not, it is still a strong one-off idea from a builder who has spent three decades proving that tactile electronics can be just as important as nostalgia.