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Hopkin Instrumentarium: Icicles & Pop Ice Black Friday pricing is $19.50, 50% off, until Dec 6, 2026, for Soundiron's Kontakt library of two plucked string instruments with a stainless-steel soundboard.
Both instruments use short, highly tensioned strings. A rigid stainless-steel sheet hangs directly from those strings, and the maker says that gives each note a bright, crystalline tone.
The sheet also produces a long, shimmering tail of reverberation, which adds depth to every pluck.
Icicles has 26 short string segments, and each one vibrates in unison with the steel sheet. The maker describes the result as a pure, shimmering sound that evolves with every pluck.
Pop Ice adds a thin Styrofoam sheet in direct contact with the strings. That second soundboard gives a sharp, percussive pop on the attack, followed by the sustained resonance of the steel sheet.
The contrast between the pop and the ringing sustain is what separates the two instruments.
Soundiron captured both instruments across three main articulations:
Every articulation is recorded from two microphone perspectives, Close and Contact.
Expression comes from up to 8x round robin and 6 velocity layers per note. If you want to blend the two mic positions, both are there to mix.
Beyond the playable instruments, the library ships with sound design content and presets:
The pads and drones come from the instruments' own recordings, and the FX presets let you reshape the sound further.
The.nki presets need the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt, version 6.2.2 or newer. The free Kontakt Player and the Add Library import process do not support this library.
On Windows you need Windows 7 or higher. On Mac you need OS X 10.12 or higher.
The maker lists a dual-core CPU and 2 GB of system RAM as the minimum. A SATA or SSD drive is recommended for the sample streaming.
Yes. The Hopkin Instrumentarium: Icicles & Pop Ice Black Friday deal takes 50% off, bringing the Soundiron Kontakt library to $19.50. The offer ends Dec 6, 2026.
The library has 21 Kontakt.nki presets and 3,004 stereo samples in unlocked.WAV format, at 6.28 GB installed. It also includes 20 custom FX presets and 20 ambient pads and evolving drones built from the source recordings.
No. It is made for the full retail version of Kontakt, version 6.2.2 or newer. The free Kontakt Player and the Add Library import process do not support this open-format library, so the.nki presets need the full version.
Icicles gives a pure, shimmering tone from 26 string segments resonating with a stainless-steel sheet. Pop Ice adds a thin Styrofoam sheet touching the strings, producing a sharp, percussive pop before the steel sheet's sustained resonance takes over.
Prices and end dates are checked at publishing time and can change, so confirm them at the store before you buy.