The manual is hefty and feels very solid, and is connected to the module with a non-standard USB A to USB A cable (and is not USB at all - it just uses the connectors, so you can use a standard USB extension cable to get a longer cable.
It feels very responsive and expressive to play and is quite a special experience, but will definitely take some practice to not sound out of tune all the time. The plastic surface is smooth but sometimes grips my finger too much if my skin is a bit dry - I'm considering keeping moisturiser close by to help. The position sensor is very sensitive to the lightest touch. The pressure sensor is a bit less sensitive and very playable. You don't need to press hard at all.
The sensor itself is labelled looks like it's made with conductors attached to plastic film, similar to the contacts in a membrane keyboard. Time will tell how long this will last. Long, I hope, since it's a lot of fun to play.
When touching with two fingers, the note played (or rather the position CV out) is not the position of the highest finger but is somewhere between the two (and not at all half way, either), so you can't trill naturally like you can on a monosynth keyboard. This is surely something common to all analogue ribbon controllers of this nature.
The system has two separate sensor sections: one for position, and one for pressure. Both these sections have a CV out with a scale knob, and a gate out with a threshold knob. Additionally, the position section has a hold on/off switch. With the hold switch off, the gate output switches on with even the slightest touch of the sensor, even before the pressure sensor registers. But then, the position CV out drops back to 0V (I think it's 0, but I didn't measure) as soon as you let go. This is fine if you don't use any release on the amp envelope, but if you do, you can hear the pitch suddenly drop when you let go. Switching the hold switch to on solves this by holding the pitch when you let go, but here's what's annoying: with this mode, the position gate out is always on, which makes it useless (well it's a useful voltage source I guess). This is working as documented on Doepfer's website. You can instead use the pressure gate, but that means you have to press slightly harder to trigger notes. It would be nice if the position gate out would still function when hold is on. Of course you could keep hold mode off and use your own S&H module to hold the pitch instead.
Another nice to have feature would be the ability to connect the manual at the rear of the module instead of the front, but it's no big deal.
