This video, via genkiginko, demonstrates how the alternate firmware for the M-Vave FM-1 is starting to be ported to the SMK-37, M-Vave’s 37-key MIDI controller and synthesizer.
The M-Vave SMK-37 is an inexpensive synthesizer and MIDI controller. The SMK-37’s low cost makes it, like the FM-1, a relatively risk-free platform for experimenting with firmware mods.
Options include:
- Makkuro37: A microtonal drone synth with 8 voices.
- Snoop37: SLOOP by isod89 with the SMK’s extras: velocity keys and pads in the track colours, a pad sound picker, fader banks (level, filter, reverb, delay), pitch and mod wheels.
- X0X37 and FoMni37: Charles Vestal’s fm1-x0x (909, 808, two 303s) and fm1-fomni (Omnichord-style, the pads are the strum plate).
- Port kit: the SMK-37 board layer plus a step-by-step guide to port any FM-1 firmware, written so you can follow it with a coding assistant like Claude. The FM-1 build stays byte-identical, so the SMK target can live upstream. I’m sending the ports to their maintainers as pull requests.
See genkigenki’s Github repo for more info.
Pricing and Availability:
The M-Vave SMK-37 synthesizers and MIDI controller is available now for about $135 USD.
I’m wondering with all of these firmware updates, can you only use one or multiple updates? I’d seen a few that I would like to use together, if that’s possible.