Teenage Engineering has once again demonstrated why companies like Panic, creator of the Playdate handheld, regularly turn to companies to design products for them. The TX-6 is TE’s new handheld, battery-powered mixer, and it’s gorgeous. In fact, it’s so beautiful that only a handful of mobile music makers will benefit from it, which is a shame.
Known for their line of pocket-sized electronic sequencers, accurately called Pocket Operators, Teenage Engineering takes its name from compact electronic instruments that are surprisingly capable despite their small footprint. Continuing the tradition of perfectly balancing form and function, the new TE TX-6 looks smaller than a Nintendo Game Boy.
The TX-6 is packaged in a housing made of precision CNC machined aluminum and features a rechargeable battery for approximately 8 hours of jam pumping, powering custom designed and fabricated encoders and faders (given that no human such a small mixer manufacturing part). It accepts signals from up to six stereo sources using the 3.5mm jack located on the top of the unit, and can mix and apply effects like reverb, chorus, delay, distortion and even a three-band EQ using three knobs on each channel These are fully customizable.
One corner of the mixer has a tiny 48×64 pixel monochrome display with a pixelated yet easy-to-navigate user interface for configuring the TX-6, but it also has onboard Bluetooth, allowing it to connect wirelessly to applications as a MIDI controller program and interact with it, or physically connect to other devices using a USB-C cable.
Teenage Engineering even includes a synth and sequencer feature in the TX-6, with “4 oscillator waveforms and 4 synth drum sounds,” although you’re better off using the company’s other instrument creations for beats. But the most surprising thing about the TX-6 is its price tag. Available now for $1,200 via the Teenage Engineering website, it’s almost as expensive as the company’s much-loved OP-1 portable synth, which normally sells for $1,300 but is currently sold out. That’s a tough sell for casual music experimenters like me who just want to fiddle with the TX-6’s lovely knurled knobs, but serious musicians do their best when crammed into a tiny airplane seat, they probably will see more value from it.
