Tabletop Humbucker
What is it?
The Tabletop Humbucker is a magnetic pickup designed for hands-on sound exploration. By interacting with everyday objects—springs, screws, coins, and found objects—you can create textures, drones, rhythms, impacts, and entirely new instruments from the world around you.
Hands-on sounds
Many electronic instruments begin with oscillators, samples, or synthesizers. The Tabletop Humbucker begins with physical objects. It invites you to explore sound through touch and experimentation. What happens when a spring vibrates over a magnetic field? What sounds emerge from a spinning bearing, a ruler, a chain, or a piece of glass? The answers are often surprising.
How does it work?
At its core is a custom humbucking pickup housed in a solid walnut enclosure. Metal objects can be played directly over the pickup, while the included soundboard and magnetic activator make it possible to capture sounds from materials such as wood, paper, plastic, and ceramics. The pickup is suspended in silicone to reduce handling noise and unwanted vibrations. An included grounding wire helps reduce hum and interference when held in your hand.
Plug it in
The Tabletop Humbucker is completely passive and connects directly to guitar pedals, amplifiers, audio interfaces, mixers, and recording equipment. Use it as a source of raw material for sampling, build evolving ambient soundscapes, create cinematic effects, or simply discover sounds you've never heard before.
Leave it on your desk, plug it in, and see what happens.
See it in action
Watch the Tabletop Humbucker transform everyday objects into sounds.
In the wild
RedMeansRecording took the Happy Dinosaur Tabletop Humbucker to extraordinary creative heights in this video.
In the wild
BoBeats featured the Happy Dinosaur Tabletop Humbucker in his latest Synth Gift Ideas video.
Meet the maker
Hi! I’m Tobias Karlsson, the creator of Happy Dinosaur.
I was one of those kids who couldn’t resist disassembling things just to see how they worked.
The Tabletop Humbucker was born out of a wish to return to a more physical way of exploring sound and music.
As humans, we see and touch, feel and react — but a computer mouse or touch screen robs us of those primal sensations.
With the Tabletop Humbucker, I hope to help others rediscover the child-like joy of manipulating sound with their own hands.