Hello everyone,

We are happy to announce the first firmware update for the PGB-1, with a few bug fixes and new synth engines. But first we want to draw your attention to something important.

For those of you that read the quick start guide, you may have noticed the “forced firmware update” procedure. Due to a hardware issue, this procedure is actually ineffective on the first batch of PGB-1. For normal operations, this shouldn’t be a problem. However, we want to mention two situations which might cause the device to be blocked and require a hardware debugger to unlock. If this happens to you, use the contact form on our website and we will guide you through the recovery.

The first one is an interruption during a firmware update that might leave the device in an invalid state. To prevent this: use a good quality USB cable, don’t unplug the device during the update, wait until it resets and displays the Wee Noise Makers splash screen, if you update from a laptop make sure it has enough battery, etc.

The second one is installing a third party firmware that doesn’t have an update mode feature. To avoid this, either don’t install any alternative firmware or ask the author to confirm there and update mode.

How to update

The new firmware is available from this link:

PGB-1 Firmware v1.1.0

And we have a video showing how to install it:

Let’s have a look at the new firmware content

In this 1.1.0 version we bring you a couple of “Quality of Life” improvements, bug fixes, and new sound engines.

  • New synth engines for bass and lead are:
    • PDR Square Full Sine (Phase Distortion Resonance)
    • Triangle Phaser
    • Sine Phaser
    • Sine Pluck
    • Triangle Pluck
    • Chip Pluck
  • “Quality of Life” improvements:
    • Better precision and stability of the touch strip
    • When a new chord is added to a progression, the view jumps automatically to edit that chord
    • The chord progression hint is now displayed on the CPY/FX page. This is to help to time effects with chord changes.
    • Reduced audio pop/click at startup
  • Bug fixes:
    • Fix stereo line-in (only the left channel was enabled)
    • Fix sound quality for sample recording
    • Fix synth engine names going outside the screen

Demo Track

As a small bonus we prepared a demo track using some of the new synth engines: