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A white Teenage Engineering OP-1 under blue light, tape reels on the screen, colored knobs above the keys.
Teenage Engineering OP-1 at Pulsn, 6 March 2013. GeschnittenBrot / CC BY-SA 2.0. The instrument, thirteen years before the interview.

OBJECTS

No Undo

On 7 October 2026 Jesper Kouthoofd told Highsnobiety he plans to stop making synthesizers, OP-1 included. DJ Mag wrote it up on 15 October.

format
Essay
volume
10
date
Oct 16, 2026
author
CJ Archer
artists
Teenage Engineering
words
656 words · 3 min
photo
Photo: GeschnittenBrot

On 7 October 2026 Jesper Kouthoofd told Highsnobiety, from Teenage Engineering’s headquarters in Hammarby Sjöstad, that he is planning to stop making synthesizers. He said he told the team the same thing in autumn 2025, during a reorganization. The OP-1 is no exception. Launched in 2011, it is the instrument that put the Stockholm company on the map. “Everyone was like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Kouthoofd said. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that, for us, the products aren’t the business. We can be so much more than that.”

He is 56. He founded Teenage Engineering in 2005. Highsnobiety puts the company at roughly 100 employees and annual revenue of around $46 million. The OP-1 Field is the successor. The same interview names Aurora, Mike Dean and Jean-Michel Jarre among the people who have played the original, and calls it, fifteen years on, one of the most sought-after instruments on Reverb. Kouthoofd’s account of why he built it is a protest against making music on a laptop. Then he explains the people who buy the box anyway. “Ninety-nine percent of people who buy synths don’t use them as a productive tool for making music. It’s therapy. It’s entertainment. It’s a hobby. That’s what the OP-1 is. The first version didn’t even have an undo button.”

A cow, a choir, a case

The screen is part of the same argument. A cow’s four stomachs stand in for the delay effects. Opening the sequencer brings up the phrase “Marx was right.” Around the synthesizer, the catalogue has kept its other jokes: a portable vinyl cutter, and a choir of eight wooden dolls, priced in the interview at $2,000, singing choral classics. He told the writer that when a product may not be reasonable, or probably will not be profitable, it is worth putting out to see what happens. He wanted a plastic computer case to cost $10. The team said it cost $10 just to make. He said they would give it away, and then there was no argument left. MusicRadar, the next day, reports that the Computer-2 case was given away last year.

The sentence that makes the synth plan fit his own logic is the one about the company. “We shouldn’t make profits out of the products,” he said. “The real value lies in the company as a whole.” He no longer wants ideas to arrive as “obvious end products,” and the example he gives is another synthesizer. Behind a door at headquarters marked no entry, he showed the writer machines that are still prototypes and said some of them will not be released for five to ten years, including a project he believes will change life online. He did not name it.

An interview travelling as news

The interview gives the plan and withholds the calendar. There is no last day of production, no list of which instruments stop, and no word on repairs or firmware. The Verge asked Teenage Engineering for comment on 7 October, the night it ran Kouthoofd’s quotes, and reported that none came back. MusicRadar printed the ninety-nine percent line on 8 October. On 15 October DJ Mag’s headline said the company “announces plans to stop making synthesisers,” and the piece said Teenage Engineering had “announced plans to pivot away from making synths.” Under both of those verbs is the same conversation in Hammarby Sjöstad. A plan he says he told the staff, then repeated to a magazine, is now travelling as an announcement. The first OP-1 had no undo button, which he said himself. The interview still does not give a last day of production.

Sources

Doors at Six Deep Sleep Vol. 10

CJ Archer