£299 / $299 / €349, teenage.engineering
An office joke? A dare? It’s impossible to know just where the idea for the EP-1320 Medieval came from, but it’s here, and it’s weird.
After the smashing success of the original EP133 K.O. II, anticipation was riding high for the next entry in the EP line. Once Teenage Engineering dropped the announcement for its ‘Instrumentalis Electronicum’ there was a moment of collective confusion as we all processed the fact that this wasn’t just a Middle Ages theme re-skin, but a whole new product with additional features, effects, expanded storage, and a curated sound set.
So let’s look at what’s different, what’s the same, and whether any of it makes sense.
The most obvious changes are visual. As with all things Teenage Engineering, the EP-1320’s aesthetic is impeccable. The device’s new colour scheme dispenses with 80s retro grey in favour of olive greens and chocolate browns. There is a lot of talk that the sampler’s buttons had been purposely scented with cocoa and we can confirm that this is actually true. Why do this? What relevance does chocolate have to medieval Europe? Does it allude to the discovery of the New World and the beginning of the Age of Discovery? Are we being trolled? The puzzle will remain unsolved.
Anyway, the EP-1320 also gets a suite of new icons for its LED panel and these, naturally, feature castle turrets, cannons, coats of arms, and quills. There’s a refreshed naming convention, rendered in an Old English font, that draws liberally from Latin and faux Latin. It’s all so well executed that even sceptics will probably find themselves at least partially enchanted by the silliness of it all.
The hardware itself is much the same, with velocity- and aftertouch-enabled mechanical keys, built-in speaker and microphone, ports for audio and MIDI in/out and data transfer, plus a removable panel that hides slots for four AAA batteries. It’s an identical layout configuration to the EP-133 K.O. II.
The workflow is similarly unchanged – we can hold up to nine projects, each project has four sample groups, and each group can hold patterns ranging from 1-99 bars in length. These groups can be independently mixed using the fader located on the left-hand side, and scenes, which can be created using the ‘Comitto’ button, allow you to build pattern variations and then mix and match between them. As with the EP-133, there’s still no song mode for chaining patterns together.
Getting properly comfortable with the EP-133 took some time, with lots of multi-button combos to learn before you could harness its full power. The EP-1320 takes that weakness and turns it into a fatal flaw. The archaic naming convention quickly moves from funny to frustrating. Velix, summa, demus, fabula – what do these things mean? Consult the hardware manual.
Small but essential visual clues, such as the copy, paste, and undo icons are now gone, and we’ve also lost some functionality on the LED screen. Whereas on the EP-133 there were a series of visual meters on the right-hand side to show what level a parameter might be at, on the new model this has been replaced with the image of an angel dropping a beat, so you’ll have to dial in envelopes blind.
The biggest advancements over the EP-133 are a new arpeggiator, the ability to properly loop samples with crossfade, and a handful of pleasing new send effects. There’s now a dark and dungeon-y echo, a droning ensemble effect, and Dimension; which sounds like a stereo widener with added creative controls for tremolo thrown in. Pleasing push effects have also been added, and these have clearly been designed to play well with the unit’s early music sample library.
Flicking through those factory samples is where things get truly bizarre. It’s not that there aren’t some useful sounds on offer (there are) but the overall palette is not just niche – it’s intentionally comical. Interestingly though, the EP-1320 arrives with nine demo projects, something Teenage Engineering didn’t feel the need to do with the EP-133 K.O. II, and these showcase the factory samples and give some idea of what kind of music you might make with them.
The percussion samples are likely the most intriguing and these could easily find their way into many different production styles to add an unusual timbre. The flutes and lutes sound decent, there’s a tasty bowed harp, and the Gregorian chants are pretty cool. From there, however, it’s a downward spiral of diminishing returns, as the novelty of jamming out sword clashes, armour impacts, yelling peasants, and the cries of farmyard animals lasts about as long as you’d expect.
Maddeningly, these hyper-specific samples are non-negotiable – they cannot be removed from the device. So if you wanted to keep some sonorous drum hits and clear out the samples of squealing pigs, you can’t. Out of the unit’s 128 MB of storage, 96 of those precious megabytes are off-limits, leaving you with even less space for your own samples than you could theoretically achieve on the EP-133.
This, more than anything else, gives the impression that Teenage Engineering is not even trying to elevate the EP-1320 above the level of gimmick. This is not a workhorse sampler, it’s a decrepit mule dragging a rickety cart piled with antiques and ornaments, and that’s just what its designers intended.
So, who is this actually for? If you compose a lot of period-specific music, there could be some interest here – but then again, you probably already have sample libraries that offer higher quality and variety. Likewise, if you’re looking to spice up your productions with some lesser-known early music instruments, there are easier and cheaper ways to source this material. If you’re neck deep in the Dungeon Synth scene then this device will have you salivating. For everyone else, it’s worth a giggle and not much more.
That said, this wouldn’t be the first time Teenage Engineering has gambled on a risky joke and had it pay off. Remember that £1,600 desk? It’s currently sold out. We may yet see DJs dropping hurdy-gurdy grooves on the dance floor.
The EP-1320 had a chance to be a genuine step forward. The new sample looping feature, arpeggiator, and additional effects are all things that users of the EP-133 would probably love to see ported over to that device. However, these improvements are ultimately hamstrung by a confusing user interface and a hyper-specific, non-removable sound set that will be useful only to the vast minority of music makers.
I’m glad that something this crazy actually exists. When the history of samplers is written, the EP-1320 will surely deserve an entry – but would I recommend it to anyone who’s not a collector or a mega-fan? Nay good sire, nay.
Key features
- 6 stereo / 12 mono voices
- Built-in mic and speaker
- 128 MB memory (96 MB dedicated to factory samples, 32 MB available for user samples)
- 9 built-in demo songs
- 12 punch in effects
- 7 send effects
- MIDI In, MIDI Out, and Sync connectivity
- Power via USB-C or 4 AAA batteries
