A British studio that began with one clock module.

ALM Busy Circuits is a small British maker of Eurorack synthesiser modules, the 3U rack format for modular synthesisers. Its website describes it as a UK-based audio technology company and dates its start to 2012, “with the release of the classic Pamela’s Workout Eurorack module,” adding that it has since made more than 50 modules. The business trades as ALM/Busy Circuits; the website’s footer gives ALM Co Ltd, and its contact page says ALM/Busy Circuits is part of Allum & Company Limited, registered in England and Wales. A 2013 copy of the site kept by the Internet Archive carried the copyright line “Allum & Co Ltd” and described “a UK based boutique electronics design company producing original, useful and fun devices for the creation, manipulation and control of sound.”

The person behind it is Matthew Allum. In April 2013 Control, the synthesiser shop in Brooklyn, announced a demonstration by “Matthew Allum founder of ALM Busy Circuits and designer of the recent Pamela’s Workout module,” coming “all the way from the UK,” as the blog Matrixsynth relayed. FACT magazine named him as ALM’s designer in 2017, and in August 2025 the shop Signal Sounds invited him to host an in-store event, calling him “the brains behind Pamela’s New/Pro Workout and dozens of other” modules. ALM’s press releases are datelined London, and in December 2025 it held a launch party at Phonica Records in Soho.

Pamela, Akemie and a squid.

The first module, ALM001, set the template. A 2013 copy of its product page describes Pamela’s Workout as “a compact programmable clock source” with eight editable trigger outputs tied to a clock running from 25 to 300 beats a minute, a “‘NOS’ vintage LED display” and an 8HP panel, and it ends with the words “Designed and built in England.” The original is now discontinued and, the company says, succeeded by Pamela’s PRO Workout, whose outputs produce anything from clocked triggers to rhythmic waveforms and quantised melodic patterns; an intermediate model, Pamela’s NEW Workout, kept the form factor but added an OLED display and rewritten software.

Much of the catalogue looks back to older hardware. Akemie’s Castle is a dual oscillator with four-operator FM that, the company says, uses “new-old-stock” Yamaha chips; SID Guts takes as its subject the SID, the sound chip of the Commodore 64; and the MFX effects module draws, its maker says, on “DSP technologies from the dawn of digital effects in the 70s.” The Squid Salmple, an eight-channel audio and CV sampler, takes its cue from early hardware samplers and reuses the Pamela-style interface.

Collaborations are a habit. The MUM M8 filter, released in November 2017 with the producer Mumdance, is based on the filter of Akai’s 1988 S950 sampler with resonance added; FACT reported that Allum tracked down the schematic for the S950’s filter section and that the module cost £179. ALM also made Haswell’s Taiko, a drum module limited to 100 numbered units with wavetables hand-drawn by the artist Russell Haswell, and modules designed with Worng Electronics and Feedback Modules. Smaller utilities fill the gaps: in June 2018 FACT described ALM as a “UK modular specialist” when it released the HPO, a slim 2HP headphone module costing £55. It has since moved beyond the rack with the MFX Pedal, a standalone effects unit for guitars and synthesisers, the Turismo complete system, cases and plug-in software.

Seven makers, four countries.

Two of the seven are British. ALM Busy Circuits dates its start to 2012 and its first module, Pamela’s Workout; its founder, Matthew Allum, is named by retailers and FACT magazine, and its press releases are datelined London. Instruō Limited of Glasgow, Scotland, was incorporated in 2016 with Jason Lim as its director, Companies House records show, and Lim has presented its instruments in public, including at the SchneidersLaden shop in Berlin in 2019.

Two have their roots in Barcelona. Befaco says it was created in February 2010 as an open-hardware platform, publishing its designs under a Creative Commons licence; an archived version of its website credits the support of Hangar, a Barcelona arts production centre. Endorphin.es says it was founded in 2010 by Andreas Zhukovsky in Kyiv, Ukraine, registered as a company there in 2013 with Julia Bondar, and moved to Barcelona in 2016.

Two are American. Pittsburgh Modular says it was established in 2012 by Richard Nicol, though archived pages show it selling modules by 2010; it is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where it says its Structure cases are built, tested and shipped. Qu-Bit Electronix says Andrew Ikenberry founded it in 2013 while a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston; it is now based in San Clemente, California, and says it keeps as much manufacturing as possible in-house.

Verbos Electronics crossed the Atlantic. Mark and Sonya Verbos launched its first five modules at the NAMM show in 2014, moved production into a New York workspace after six months of outsourcing, and relocated to Berlin in 2017; the company, now Verbos Electronics GmbH, says its modules are designed and assembled there.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Made in the UK — once said plainly.

ALM appears to have stayed independent: the sources checked record no outside owner or acquisition, and its own contact page names Allum & Company Limited as the business behind it. Where the modules are made is stated less plainly than it used to be. In 2013 the first module was “Designed and built in England,” and in 2020 the about page said ALM/Busy Circuits products “are manufactured in the UK with an emphasis on build quality, attention to detail, best ethics and responsible sourcing.” The current about page drops that sentence, and the module descriptions we checked make no country-of-manufacture claim; the one “Handmade in the UK” in the shop belongs to a zip pouch. We therefore give UK manufacture as the company’s earlier claim, not as a current, documented fact.

Recent releases show the range. The Stem Ripper is an eight-channel recorder that writes every stem of a patch to a micro SD card, joined in 2026 by the With Mixer expander. Pamela’s Disco syncs a modular system to the master tempo of a PRO DJ-LINK network of DJ players; ALM launched it at Phonica in December 2025 with hybrid DJ and Eurorack sets from Luke Slater and Emerald, and said it would show it again at Margate Electronics the following evening. Its “Busy Visits” video series tours artists’ studios, among them that of Andrew Hale of Sade in London.

For a design guide, ALM Busy Circuits shows how a founder-led studio can build a recognisable voice through names — Pamela, Akemie, the Squid Salmple — and a playful tone rather than a corporate system. Compare Make Noise and Mutable Instruments, two other designer-led Eurorack makers. For this guide we use navy, aluminium grey and an LED red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep ALM Busy Circuits’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.