Teenage Engineering OP-1 Synthesizer: The Reasons Of The New Price Are Now Known!

Teenage Engineering OP-1 Synthesizer Is Back With A 50% Price Rise!

SYNTH ANATOMY uses affiliation & partner programs (big red buttons) to finance a part of the activity. If you use these, you support the website. Thanks! 

The announcement about the new price of the Teenage Engineering OP-1 was rather negative for many users. To get an answer, why there was such a big price increase, I talked with the TE team and they wrote this statement back:

We have had to face other costs than the actual components’ costs of course. The currency conversion, inflation, sourcing of the new component, re-coding the display, re-designing the mounting, new tools etc. are just a few of the “why”. When Teenage Engineering faced the reality of the OP-1’s future, there were only 2 choices: kill or save. We decided to save it. I understand that the new price is a disappointment to many of our fans. But I do hope some are happy that we did not kill it.
Teenage Engineering OP-1

It’s good to hear that there are reasons. Still, the new price is very high and I’m not sure if it was not given the opportunity to make the price raise smaller.

News From February 14, 2019!

In the last quarter of 2018, one topic was huge: the production stop of the Teenage Engineering OP-1 Synthesizer and the crazy prices on the second-hand market. This was only for a short time. Today on Valentine’s Day, the company announced that the OP-1 is available again. The interesting thing about this news is probably the new price. It now costs 1399 € which is an increase of 50% compared to the old price.

There is currently no exact information on why the price was so increased. One can now ask whether the farewell and return was a pure marketing or sales decision or not. Surely something weird this decision.

OP-1 is the all-in-one portable synthesizer, sampler and controller. with additional features like a built-in FM radio and an assignable G-force sensor for motion controlled effects, there is quite nothing like it. Its modular architecture enables endless sound possibilities without making the workflow complicated or distracting.  The compact design and real physical interface makes it inspiring to create music, no matter who you are or how experienced you are. 

Synthesizer and controller with ten synthesizer engines, eight high-quality effects and multiple routable LFO’s, you’ll never hit the wall when it comes to creativity or finding the right sound for the job…

Teenage Engineering OP-1 is available now for 1399€ from the official webshop!

More information here: Teenage Engineering

Hardware Synthesizer News

9 Comments

  1. I was told that the price increase was due to increased manufacturing costs. No specifics as to what that means (parts, labour…?)
    Not sure I believe that 100% though! Taking time to find new parts is one thing. These new parts coming with a 90% price increase is either lazy or incompetent, or the price hike is simply pure greed!

    • This is absurd, whilst I do not have an OP-1 nor have any interest, their explanation is a bit hollow. They the price elasticity was discovered during the recent false rumours and subsequent secondary marketplace price surge. Whilst tooling costs and programming played a role, the near 50% price hike is more a product of capitalising on the perceived demand than the factors they cited.

      And of course they reserve the right to charge any amount they see fit, however the explanation seems suspect at best.

  2. This is the same company that recently said:

    “No one should pay the high prices that used OP-1 synths were being listed for on Reverb.com & eBay.”
    So they raised the price from $800 to $1300!
    Think about that. They raised the price on an $800 item by $500!
    F*ck these guys!

    • Yes I thought the same. This is pure greed. They killed a lot of their good reputation. I found them really nice and for me it completely changed. Sad but true.

  3. From $850 to $1300? For the same item, but with a newly sourced OLED? A massive shame. Teenage Engineering could have come out of this smelling like roses, because of the current price gouging on used OP-1’s. The resulting publicity of a return to production at the same price would have attracted many new customers, but instead they come out of it all as huge money-grabbing dicks who are quite happy to give potential customers the middle finger. They may as well build new OP-1’s to order, as at $1300 they will soon end up on blowout at Guitar Center. RIP.

  4. Agreed. Frankly I was looking at getting the OPZ anyway with a view to perhaps getting an OP-1 if they re-released it. Now I’m starting to think of getting neither.

  5. If they faced the problems they say they did, why didn´t they update the hardware/software in order to come up with a real ver. 2.0 (upgraded CPU, assign new control to the encoders ability to be pushed, new engines, double the tracks to 8, etc) for which people would justify paying the 50% increase?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*