A Kyiv engineer, a Vienna workbench and a name taken from a web address.

Endorphin.es takes its name from a web address. The company says it was founded in 2010 by Andreas Zhukovsky, an engineer born in Kyiv with a background in mathematics and electronic music production, who had been sketching his own DIY synthesizer designs since 2008. On 23 November 2010, it says, he registered the domain endorphin.es and the matching Twitter handle — the Spanish “.es” ending completing the word “endorphines” — and that address became the company’s name. Years later the business would, fittingly, end up in Spain.

The first instrument was the Furthrrrr Generator. According to the company, its oscillator design was inspired by the Model 259 Programmable Complex Waveform Generator, a vintage module from the Buchla range, because instruments like it “were not accessible in a post-soviet environment”; Zhukovsky’s idea was to bring that kind of synthesis to the newer and more affordable Eurorack format, adding modern features such as tuners and stable oscillators. He moved to Vienna in 2011, the company says, and finished a working Furthrrrr Generator there in 2012: two analogue triangle-core oscillators, a modulator and a carrier, with amplitude, ring, frequency and waveshaper modulation and hard and soft sync. The company dates its presence in the Eurorack market from 2012.

In 2013 Julia Bondar joined Zhukovsky, and the two registered the business in Kyiv as Endorphines and Associates Ltd, the company says; from then on the Furthrrrr Generator was manufactured and sold through music shops around the world. Between 2013 and 2016 the firm stayed in Kyiv and began mixing analogue circuits with ARM DSP processors — an approach the company calls relatively new in Eurorack at the time — to fit more functions into narrower modules. In 2023 CDM described Zhukovsky as the engineering lead and Bondar, also an active artist, as integral to the company, which now calls itself “a pioneering family owned brand.”

Barcelona, black panels and drum machines.

In 2016 the company moved to Barcelona, opened its first office and workshop there and registered a new company, Furth Barcelona, S.L., trading under the registered trade mark ENDORPHIN.ES. At the Winter NAMM Show in 2017, it says, it released the Shuttle System: five modules under a single faceplate — the Shuttle Control USB-MIDI-to-CV converter with 16 assignable outputs, the Furthrrrr Generator, the Grand Terminal envelope, filter and effects module, the Gateway mixer and the Cockpit stereo mixer — sold as one instrument. The company calls it its flagship.

Blck_Noir, a seven-voice drum synthesizer the company says was inspired by the Roland CR-78 and by minimal and dark-wave music, followed in 2018. It was the first Endorphin.es module with a black satin anodised aluminium faceplate, and later that year the company offered its earlier modules in black too, selling replacement panels and knobs so owners could change the look of modules they already had. A run of narrow 6hp modules came in 2019 — the Airstreamer envelope, the Godspeed thru-zero oscillator, the Squawk Dirty To Me filter and the Milky Way effects processor — and in January 2020 the company moved to a new office in Barcelona’s industrial Poblenou district.

The 2020 releases included Queen of Pentacles, a drum module combining three analogue voices inspired by the Roland TR-909 with four sample-playback voices, its factory samples made with the techno artist Nicolas Bougaïeff, co-founder of Liine; the company says it appeared on best-of-2020 lists from Perfect Circuit and MusicRadar. Ground Control, a 42hp sequencer workstation, followed in 2021 — CDM covered its release as a standalone desktop sequencer in 2023 — along with Golden Master, Two of Cups and Total Recall, and versions of several modules in Intellijel’s 1U format.

Design and documentation.

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.

Silver Metalphoto, licensed Helvetica and a pink pet.

Endorphin.es is unusually explicit about its design. In winter 2022, the company says, it introduced all of its modules in a new silver Metalphoto panel design, together with a new logo and “design code”, describing the result as a “minimalistic and fresh industrial look.” Its legal page adds two details that most makers never publish: that Linotype Helvetica and Neue Helvetica are licensed for its website and used “in the new module’s design code,” and that all the design and content of the website, including the photographs, are by Andreas Zhukovsky. The company also runs Endorphin.es Production, making images and music videos, on the principle that “unique sound needs to have a unique visual representation.”

Collaboration widened its audience. In October 2022 it released GHOST, a 16HP multi-effects module developed with the YouTube musician Andrew Huang, whose name appears on the faceplate; English Wikipedia records the release and a guitar-pedal version in October 2023, which the company says went on sale on 17 October alongside a Golden Master pedal. Reviewing GHOST in February 2023, CDM’s Peter Kirn called it “a greatest-hits-plus of endorphin.es’ modules packed into 16HP” and “another new-generation classic.” In October 2025 Synth Anatomy reported the Evil Pet, a compact MPE polyphonic granular synthesizer and multi-effects box with a built-in FM radio tuner; the company says it is “dressed in a glossy pink color,” with mechanical keys, a built-in microphone and a small monochrome OLED screen.

For a design guide, Endorphin.es shows how a deliberate visual system can carry a catalogue through changes of city, panel colour and product type: a name taken from a domain, a licensed Swiss typeface, black and then silver panels, and a single loud pink for its most playful product. Compare the 1U-format partner Intellijel and the Riga-based Erica Synths. For this guide we use satin black, Metalphoto silver, graphite and a pet pink with a clean sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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