Vibe coding sparks a wave of custom firmware for music gear

LLM-based vibe coding tools have triggered an explosion of homemade firmware for synths, samplers and grooveboxes. The $70 Yamaha DX-7 clone M-Vave FM-1 now has dozens of custom firmwares, while Elektron banned links to mods on its forum.

• The $70 M-Vave FM-1 has dozens of custom firmwares, some built with Claude
• Mods added virtual analog, sample playback and sequencing to the FM-1
• Elektron banned links to custom firmware on its official forum
• M-Vave released the open-source FM1 Open firmware and a flashing tool