Fred's Lab - Instruments

Fred's Lab design, manufacture and sell fine and innovative electronic music instruments in Bonn, Ge

01/08/2026

One of Fred's Lab forces and reasons why we can still offer affordable & quality gear is I still fu**in do the parts procurement myself!
It takes real effort, it's sometimes tedious & risky and it requires to plan productions often more than six months in advance. We are proud to work directly with the part manufacturers so we can ensure the quality of what gets mounted in our machines when we assemble them in Bonn / Germany.

01/08/2026

Manatee just got a new look - and an extra performance boost!
For a short period, our 16 voice, 4 part digital synthesizer is going dark and will be offered with a black housing & black k***s. Units are immediately available at https://fredslab.net / while stocks last. Don't delay, grab yours today!
The firmware 1.08 is also out, available for free, for all Manatee editions.

26/07/2026

Awesome news here : the freshly arrived Töörö mkII PCBAs pass all our quality tests and calibrate nicely 😎

As promised, this revision offers less background, digital and zipper noises for a start! Output level is also raised by 6dB, when using a TRS (balanced) connection. Overall more hifi sound than previous revision.

Some old bugs were also found in the software and owners of the original Töörö will also benefit from the fixes. Release is soon and only on Fred's Lab boutique for the first batch.

22/07/2026

HOTFIX 🥵 - Firmware 1.08b is out!
B is for badass! This version addresses all major & minor issues reported after the big clean up operation started in 1.08.
First, CC74 is back, second CC120 no longer crashes the synth. Additional glitches / clicks when muting sounds or loading presets were ironed out and MIDI Program Changes were sped up and prioritized over MID events to allow quicker changes of presets when launching clips from an external sequencer.

22/07/2026

Enough for me to strike a smile 😌

20/07/2026

Töörö is making its comeback!!!
Not spotted in the wild for a loooong time, now returning in a fresh mkII form!!
What to expect?
- Higher OSC DAC resolution 12 -> 16 bits
- Improved analog filters (better Q)
- Lower noise floor / less digital noise bleeding
- Reduced envelope zipper noise
- Balanced audio outputs
- and more TBA...
Töörö will be available as a limited edition only, pre-order will start in a week. Make sure to reserve yours!