Trent Reznor has a reputation for smashing keyboards on stage. This one, he’ll probably keep. Swedish woodworker Love Hultén built the Nine Inch Nails frontman a one-off sound station that combines an analog synth rig with a working Atari 2600+ console. There’s a cartridge slot on the front panel, a little monitor up top, and a joystick sitting next to the keyboard like it’s waiting for its turn. It’s basically Reznor’s childhood bedroom and recording studio merged into one hardwood cabinet on legs. Missile Command is already loaded, naturally.
Reznor had a 2600 growing up, taught himself to program on a Commodore 64, and went on to create the sound for id Software’s Quake in 1996. So the Atari here is personal. Hultén, meanwhile, has been combining woodworking with electronics since design school in 2010, building synths, arcade cabinets, and consoles, mostly as one-off commissions. His work tends to look like it came from a 1970s electronics company that hired cabinetmakers instead of plastic molders.
Designer: Love Hultén
The sound comes from an Analogue Solutions Ample, a desktop synth handmade in England with a $2,499 price tag. Apart from its MIDI chip, the circuitry is analog, with three oscillators, a 24dB low-pass filter, and circuits based on designs from the mid-1970s. Its party trick is a pin matrix, a grid where you route signals by pushing tiny pins into holes instead of wrangling patch cables. The pins come in different resistances, so the one you choose changes how strongly a signal hits its destination.
Hultén brought that pin matrix onto his own panel. Rows labeled VCO1, VCO2, VCO3, noise, and ring mod line up against destinations like filter cutoff and oscillator pitch, with bright orange pins marking the active connections. Six gold plates in the middle of the console appear to be the Ample’s touch keys, each sending a set voltage when tapped. A compact keyboard handles regular playing duties below. The knobs, switches, and pins occupy one tall panel, giving the instrument the look of a vintage studio console.
Next in the chain is the Zen Delay, a stereo delay box Erica Synths built with London label Ninja Tune, co-conceived by Coldcut’s Matt Black. It pairs a tempo-synced delay with a 24dB multimode filter and valve overdrive, a combination suited to warm, dubby sounds with a little grit. After that comes an Industrialectric RM-1N reverb pedal for extra space. Hultén gave the effects their own stretch of panel, with knobs for feedback, drive, tone, reverb mix, and one simply labeled drone. Reznor could build an entire Ghosts-style soundscape without ever leaving this cabinet.
Then there’s the Atari itself, an official 2600+ that Atari and Plaion released in 2023 for $129.99. It’s an 80%-scale replica of the 1980 four-switch model, with HDMI output, an enlarged cartridge slot, and support for original 2600 and 7800 carts. Hultén moved that slot onto the main panel, flanked by power and TV type switches that recall the original console’s controls. A small monitor sits in the top corner, and a classic joystick is set into the keyboard deck. In the photos, it’s running Missile Command, where your cities always fall eventually, which feels extremely on-brand for Nine Inch Nails.
Black panels with orange lettering mirror the old Atari cartridge labels, including the Missile Command cart sitting in the slot. The horizontal ridges across the face echo the ribbed top of the original 2600. Even the knobs alternate between black and orange. The biggest wink is the cabinet: the 2600 famously wore fake woodgrain, and Hultén answered with real hardwood. Around the back, a grain-textured black panel has an Atari logo cutout glowing red. Slim black legs give the whole thing the proportions of a mid-century cabinet.
Hultén’s 2022 NES-SY37 already paired a console with a synth using chiptune modules. This build puts an analog synth and a working Atari side by side, each doing its own job. It’s a one-off commission, so there’s no buying one. The Ample, Zen Delay, and 2600+ are separate products, though, if you’re feeling brave with a jigsaw. I just hope Reznor keeps this one far away from the stage.
