Hopkin Instrumentarium: Alt Alt Black Friday Deal 2026: $19.50, 50% off

The Hopkin Instrumentarium: Alt Alt Black Friday deal puts Soundiron's Kontakt library of a 16-string board zither at $19.50, 50% off, until Dec 6, 2026.

Alt Alt is a Kontakt instrument built from a zither that sounds all of its strings at once. This Hopkin Instrumentarium plugin library turns that single composite tone into something you can play, layer and process in the box.

What is the Alt Alt zither?

The instrument has 16 strings. Twelve are tuned to one pitch and four sit an octave above.

The strings are packed so tightly that you can't pick them one by one. The whole idea is to sound all 16 together for one big composite tone.

Pitch comes from a row of 36 spring-mounted steel bars above the strings, laid out as a chromatic scale. Pressing a bar down shortens the strings. You can strum with the right hand while holding bars with the left, or hammer the bars down to set the strings off.

Soundiron says the tone is unusually organic and full, and that a slightly imperfect tuning gives the richest chorusing.

How was it sampled?

Three playing styles were recorded: slow strums, fast strums and hammer down. Each one is available in all four layers, so you can mix and match them.

There are two stereo mic positions, Close mics and Pickups. Soundiron says it sampled every interesting sound it could get from the zither.

The library has up to 8x round robin and 6 velocity layers per note, so repeated notes don't machine-gun.

What is in the Kontakt interface?

The Kontakt interface has automation-ready controls for shaping the sound. Here is the main list:

• Swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter and pitch (coarse and fine)
• Articulation switching, cross-fading and layering
• An LFO with selectable shape, target, speed, intensity, tempo sync and fade-in time
• 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, with modulation from velocity, modwheel, expression, aftertouch, key position or step-sequencer table
• An arpeggiator with a velocity table and control over direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration
• Key and scale lock for staying in common scales and keys

A modular FX rack offers 27 DSP modules across 8 slots, in any order. Modules include phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ and rotator.

The reverb carries 99 convolution impulse responses of rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor spaces, plus 40 custom FX impulses for heavier sound design. Factory FX rack chain presets are included.

What is included, and what do you need?

The download holds 4,380 stereo samples in unlocked.WAV format. Installed size is 13.9 GB. These are the contents:

• Zither articulations: hammer down, slow strum and fast strum, in Close and Pickups mic positions
• 20 ambient pads and evolving drones made from the source recordings
• 21 Kontakt.nki instrument presets
• A selection of custom FX presets

You need the full retail version of Kontakt, version 6.2.2 or newer. The free Kontakt Player and the Add Library import don't support this library.

System requirements are Windows 7 or higher, or Mac OSX 10.12 or higher. It also calls for a dual core CPU and 2 GB of RAM. Soundiron recommends a SATA drive or SSD.