Every modular synthesist has lost a patch. You build something over two hours, it finally sits right, and then you need the case for something else — so you photograph the front panel, promise yourself the photo will be enough, and discover a month later that it isn’t. The knobs you can read. The cable spaghetti you cannot.
Adamsynths’ Warthog is built around that problem. Adam Miski’s system claims to be the world’s first analog modular synthesizer with Total Recall — storing “every parameter: knob positions, switch states, module configurations, and even complete patch routing – including audio, CV, GATE, and modulation paths.”
Milk Audio Store’s interview with Adam Miski at Roma Modulare 2026, demonstrating the recall system.
How it can possibly recall a cable
It can’t, and that’s the point. You don’t patch it with cables.
Look at the module list and one name explains the whole system: Matrix 428. Alongside the Oscillator, Multimode VCF/VCA, Dual VC ENV and Modulation Tools sits a switching matrix — and once signal routing runs through a matrix of electronically controlled switches rather than through physical 3.5mm cables, routing becomes state. State can be written to memory. Memory can be recalled.
This is not a new idea; it is a very old one that modular synthesis deliberately walked away from. The EMS VCS3 and Synthi used a pin matrix in 1969, and the ARP 2500 used sliding matrix switches rather than patch cords. The pin board was compact, legible at a glance, and — crucially — reproducible: you could write down a grid position. The cable wall won anyway, because cables are tactile, unambiguous about signal flow, and let you patch across any two points in a system you assembled yourself.
The rest of the architecture follows from the matrix. A Central Unit acts as the hub, handling saving and snapshot switching. A proprietary ASR-RAILS bus system carries signals between modules — which is what makes matrix routing possible without cables — powered by a dedicated ASR-PSU. Standard Eurorack modules are still accommodated, but a third-party module plugged in the ordinary way is outside the recall system; it will have knob positions you set by hand, like always.
The Mood Wheels are the actually interesting part
Recall alone would be a convenience feature. Two wooden control wheels that morph between saved snapshots in real time are a performance instrument.
Morphing between two patches is not the same as switching between them. If snapshot A has a slow filter sweep with the oscillator in sync and snapshot B has a fast, detuned, heavily modulated version, a wheel that travels continuously between them gives you a gesture that no sequencer or macro control quite replicates — every parameter moving together along a path you designed in advance, at a speed you control by hand.
And because routing is part of the snapshot, the morph can change where signals go, not just how much of them there is. That is the genuinely novel claim here. A crossfade between two patch topologies has no real equivalent in a cabled system; the closest you get is a stereo mixer and two complete duplicate patches.
What it costs, and what it costs you
€6,980, pre-order, payable in two 50% instalments. That is a complete system price rather than a module price, and it is roughly what a well-specified Eurorack case of comparable module count runs to — so the recall is not, in itself, the expensive part.
The real cost is architectural. A cabled Eurorack system is open: any module from any maker, any connection you can imagine, expandable a few modules at a time over years. The Warthog asks you to accept a proprietary bus and a fixed matrix in exchange for memory. You gain reproducibility and lose the thing modular people actually mean when they say the format is free.
Whether that is a good trade depends entirely on what you use a modular for. If it lives in a studio and you record with it, losing patches is an annoyance you have learned to work around. If you perform with it, or teach with it, or need to walk away and come back, recall is not a convenience — it is the difference between an instrument and a session.
Worth keeping expectations calibrated: this is a pre-order with no shipping date stated, and “world’s first” claims in modular have a habit of meeting prior art. The idea is sound and the demo is real; the delivery is not yet.