Impossible Box: a $1 million handmade electronic music instrument

This is oddball instrument artist Arius Blaze's Impossible Box, a musical instrument containing synthesizers, sequencing, MIDI, multi-tracking, sampling, a drum machine, electronic filters, and, er, thumb pianos. Blaze writes that "there was a desire in the creation to not come out the other end with million ways to make bleepy sounds." You can own it. For $1 million dollars. Impossible Box (via @chris_carter_)

• [Dave X]

  Tell ya what– you buy me the Impossible Box, and I’ll cover the Canadian girl’s laser pistol. Deal? 

• [Cameron Postelwait]

  congratulations, you’ve reinvented the kaos box.

• [EH]

  Let me guess: no manual.

• [semiotix]

  $1,000,000 shipped, sure. But I’m counting what, two dozen cables visible on the face alone? So that’s like $174,000 in danceable Pear Anjou cables right there. It’s not like you’re going to plunk down a million on a synth box and use factory wiring, are you? 

  I’m just saying, it’s going to cost a little more than its sticker price. I haven’t even gotten into the cost of replacing all those knobs.

• [Erik Lehtonen]

  Cyrus Rex builds completely complex synth.
  Picture involving Cevin Key (Probably* best known from Skinny Puppy) playing it:  http://absurdotron.com/crex-ckey.jpg
  Was I supposed to end this with the line “Priceless?”

  A million bucks? Good luck.

  -transiit

  *wouldn’t want to pigeonhole a guy. I think it’s safe to say “probably best known” though.

  • [ian williams]

     the death star called, it wants its cockpit back.

• [chris jimson]

  I remember this guy from ebay about ten years ago, he was among the first to really REALLY take circuit bending to the next level.  Then at some point he decided it was time to just build his own instruments and made some impressive looking (very steampunk) devices in antique wooden boxes and re-purposed ham radios. 

  I think the million dollar price tag is kind of a “well if someone pays that much I’ll part with it” thing. You have to consider how many hours of work went into it, and how much he should charge for his manpower as well as the parts involved.

  • [David Pescovitz]

    Yes, of course. He clearly doesn’t really want to sell it, and I totally respect that.

    • [Halloween_Jack]

       OK, then. My initial reaction was, “He wants $1M for this and he doesn’t have any samples of what it can do posted? Um…”

• [kathologist]

  Ummm…

  hasn’t Metasonix been creating ‘the next phase of circuit bending’ with vacuum tubes instead of transistors for over a decade? Why I believe so! ZOMGD…They don’t cost no where NEAR $1M…

• [kmoser]

  Newest Bond Girl: “Impossible Box”.

• [Guest]

  deleted

• [Chentzilla]

  $1 million dollars is a strange way to write a sum.

• [benher]

  Yeah, but can you imagine huffing it to a gig on the back of your bike?

• [Ken Stone]

  Clearly I’m in the wrong game… hang on, this is the game I’m in. Looks for missing millions.