Yaeltex unveils next-gen custom MIDI controllers – now with full-colour displays

Buenos Aires company Yaeltex has unveiled V3, a new and improved take on its custom MIDI controller platform that finally adds full-colour displays to improve workflow.

Yaeltex’s V3 controllers replace the system the company has built on since 2020, with the mainboard, software and several notable physical modules rebuilt from scratch.

Headlining the new features of the V3 platform is the addition of full-colour displays; V3 units can now carry up to 16 full-colour 0.96″ screens placed anywhere on the controller, each showing realtime feedback, VU meters and dynamic labels. That said, the displays are all user-configurable.

According to Yaeltex co-founder Mateo Ferley Yael, displays were “by far the most requested element since V2 came out”. He says, however, that the real challenge wasn’t simply display implementation. “The hard part isn’t adding a display,” he says. “It’s making it part of a flexible modular system that works for many purposes in professional environments.”

Elsewhere, V3 controllers feature new Kilomux mainboards, which double the endless encoder capacity from 32 to 64, and the analogue capacity (pots, faders and joysticks) from 64 to 128. There are also upgraded main and auxiliary microcontrollers, dual USB-C ports for MIDI routing, and retro-compatibility with V2 controllers.

The Kilowhat configuration software has been rebuilt from scratch as a standalone app for macOS and Windows. Each control can be set individually for message, channel, port, feedback and advanced settings and settings can be edited in bulk and copied across banks. A model view shows the controller on screen, so users can start configuring before the hardware is plugged in, or even before it ships. Touching a control on the hardware makes the app jump to it and Ableton Live control surface scripts can be developed inside the app. Kilowhat V3 does not yet support V2 devices. Yaeltex says that will follow in a later update.

Yaeltex began in Bariloche, Patagonia as a project between brothers Alejo Yael and Mateo Ferley Yael, who built their first controller in 2009. The company was incorporated in 2016 and launched V1, a two-case modular framework, that year. V2 followed in 2020 with an in-house mainboard, the Kilowhat configurator and the Factory. V2.1 added Mini Elements and the LIVE15 and TR4MIX models in 2023.

Artists using Yaeltex controllers include Richie Hawtin, Arca, Fred again.., King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Thylacine, ANYMA, Tom Rowlands and Sebastian Mullaert.

Learn more at Yaeltex.