South Africa charges no customs duty on a synthesizer. None on a microphone, a power amplifier, a mixing desk or a reel-to-reel tape machine either. Every subheading under 92.07, 85.18 and 85.19 in the current SARS tariff reads "free" in the General column. If you have been avoiding the question of import duty studio equipment South Africa because you assumed the number was frightening, the number is zero.

The money goes elsewhere: VAT, a 10 percent uplift you did not know about, a 9 percent excise that hits speakers but not synths, a clearing agent, airfreight priced by volume rather than weight, and a permit most people importing a second-hand machine have never heard of. Worked end to end, a USD 2,000 synth lands at about 1.6 times the sticker.

Rates checked September 2026, and you must check them again

Every figure below came from a primary source in the week of 8 September 2026, and schedules change constantly. Confirm every rate with the revenue authority or a licensed clearing agent before you send money. We are a shop that imports gear, not a customs broker, and this is what we have learned doing it rather than professional advice.

Import duty studio equipment South Africa: the headings that matter

Classification is the whole game. From Schedule 1 Part 1, dated 28 August 2026:

Subheading	What it covers	Duty	Ad valorem excise
9207.10	Electrically amplified keyboard instruments: synths, electric organs	Free	None
9207.90	Other electrically amplified instruments	Free	None
8518.10	Microphones and stands	Free	None
8518.21 / .22 / .29	Loudspeakers	Free	9%
8518.40	Audio-frequency electric amplifiers	Free	9%
8519.81.05	Recording apparatus using magnetic media (tape machines)	Free	None
8519.81.90	Other apparatus, optical or semiconductor media	Free	9%
8543.70	Electrical apparatus with individual functions, not elsewhere specified	Free	None

Two lines cost real money. Schedule 1 Part 2B imposes a 9 percent ad valorem excise on loudspeakers and audio-frequency amplifiers, and SARS policy is explicit that an importer pays the Part 1 duty and the Part 2B excise. Bring in a pair of Auratones or a Quad 303 and the 9 percent applies. Bring in a Polysix and it does not.

The split inside 85.19 is the other one. Magnetic media sits at 8519.81.05, which Part 2B does not list; optical and semiconductor media sit at 8519.81.90, which it does. On the face of the schedules an Otari MX-5050 escapes the excise and a CD recorder does not. Neither part distinguishes new goods from used.

VAT on imported music gear South Africa: the ATV and the 10 percent

VAT is 15 percent, and it is not charged on the invoice value. SARS calculates it on the added tax value, defined in its own guide as [(Customs Value + 10% thereof) + (any non-rebated duties levied on the goods)]. The 10 percent is paid to no one. It exists because South Africa is unusual: SC-CR-A-03, the valuation policy effective 11 December 2025, states flatly that "South Africa uses the FOB price as the basis for valuation". International freight and insurance sit outside the customs value, so the uplift stands in for them. It does not apply to goods originating in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia or Eswatini. Everything from London, Tokyo or Chicago gets it.

The ad valorem excise has its own base. Section 65(8) of the Customs and Excise Act sets it at the transaction value plus 15 percent, plus any non-rebated customs duty. A speaker import therefore gets a 15 percent uplift for excise and a 10 percent uplift for VAT on the same shipment. Conversion to rand uses the SARS customs rate of exchange, updated daily, not whatever your bank gave you.

The landed cost, worked all the way through

One American polysynth, USD 2,000 to the seller, airfreighted to Johannesburg, converted at R16.10 to the dollar, where the rand sat on 11 September 2026. Substitute your own figures.

Line	Basis	Rand
FOB price paid to seller	USD 2,000	32,200
Airfreight, US to JNB	Assumed USD 450	7,245
All-risks cargo insurance	Assumed USD 50	805
Customs value	FOB only, freight excluded	32,200
Customs duty	9207.10, free	0
Ad valorem excise	92.07 not listed in Part 2B	0
ATV uplift	10% of customs value	3,220
Added tax value	32,200 + 3,220 + 0	35,420
VAT	15% of ATV	5,313
Clearing agent	Assumed	2,500
Airport handling and documentation	Assumed	1,200
Delivery to your door	Assumed	900
Step-down transformer	Assumed	1,200
Total out of pocket		51,363
Multiplier on FOB	51,363 / 32,200	1.60

A registered VAT vendor claims the import VAT back as input tax, dropping the multiplier to about 1.43. A musician buying one synth does not, and 1.6 is the number.

Run the same R32,200 through as loudspeakers under 8518.22 and the excise appears: 32,200 plus 15 percent gives an excise value of R37,030, 9 percent of which is R3,333. That excise joins the ATV, so VAT rises to R5,813. The 9 percent line costs R3,833 all in.

We could not find a published rate card from any South African clearing agent. The R2,500 is a plausible figure for one air consignment and nothing more. Get three written quotes covering entry, documentation and any cash-outlay percentage on the duties they advance.

The used-goods permit nobody mentions

This is the one that strands shipments. ITAC's import control brochure states that "for the importation of all used or second-hand goods, an import permit is required", and its FAQ confirms that used goods, second-hand goods, waste and scrap are "subject to import control measures (certain minor exceptions)". Used electronic equipment is named explicitly, to stop e-waste being dumped here. ITAC quotes three to five working days. Apply before the machine leaves, not while it accrues storage at OR Tambo.

Separately, a private individual can import up to R150,000 a year under customs code 70707070 without registering as an importer, enforced automatically by SARS from 20 November 2025. Past that, you register.

Customs duty music equipment Nigeria, and what we could not confirm

Nigeria applies the ECOWAS Common External Tariff, a five-band structure of 0, 5, 10, 20 and 35 percent. We could not verify from an official Nigerian or ECOWAS source which band 92.07 or 85.18 falls into, and we will not guess. Ask your agent for the CET line.

VAT is 7.5 percent and stays there: the Nigeria Tax Act 2025, effective 1 January 2026, retained the rate after a proposal to phase it to 15 percent was dropped. DHL's Nigeria guide, published 25 June 2026, lists the extra charges as a 7 percent surcharge on the duty, 1 percent CISS on the FOB value and a 0.5 percent ECOWAS levy on the CIF value. That is a freight company's guide, not the Customs Service schedule.

Then there is the 4 percent Free-on-Board charge created by the Nigeria Customs Service Act 2023. Implemented, suspended in February 2025, reintroduced on 22 July 2025, then suspended again by a Ministry of Finance directive Customs acknowledged on 16 September 2025, saying it had "begun immediate consultation" about what applies instead. We found no confirmation of its status as at September 2026, and on a Lagos import that is the difference between 1 and 4 percent of the invoice. Studios there have solved hard logistics since the days covered in where Fela Kuti recorded, and none did it by assuming a rate.

Shipping synths to Kenya, and Ghana's eleven levies

Kenya is the one country here where we can give line-level numbers. The EAC Common External Tariff, 2022 version as updated June 2025, puts 9207.10.00 and 9207.90.00 at 10 percent and every subheading of 85.18 and 85.19 at 25 percent. VAT is 16 percent, with the Import Declaration Fee at 2.5 percent of declared customs value and the Railway Development Levy at 2 percent, both in PwC's Kenya summary reviewed 17 July 2026. A synth into Mombasa therefore carries roughly 14.5 percent before VAT; monitors carry 29.5.

Ghana runs the same five ECOWAS bands. Standard VAT is 15 percent from 1 January 2026 under the VAT Act 2025 (Act 1151), with NHIL and GETFund at 2.5 percent each, which Crowe puts at an effective burden of about 20 percent, down from roughly 21.9 percent once the COVID-19 levy was abolished. GRA states the value for VAT on imports is "the value for customs duty plus import duties and other taxes which may be chargeable". Its customs tariffs page lists eleven separate impositions, publishing a rate for none of them. That is a finding, not an omission. The engineers who kept Ghana Film and Bokoor running, in how highlife was recorded, solved the same problem with worse information.

Running 110v gear on 220v

South African mains is 230 volts at 50 hertz. American gear expects 120, Japanese domestic gear expects 100. Plug a 100 volt machine into 230 and it dies in seconds, transformer first. Three arrangements, three jobs:

• Rear voltage selector. A drum or slide switch marked 100 / 120 / 220 / 240. Set it, then change the fuse, because the correct rating at 230 volts is roughly half what it was at 115. Plenty of 1970s and 1980s gear has one, the Revox PR-99 lineage included.
• Tapped mains transformer, no selector. The primary has taps but they are soldered. Moving one is a twenty-minute bench job, and the unit then runs native on 230 with no transformer on your floor. Check first that a 230 volt tap exists: Japanese domestic units frequently have only 100.
• External wall-wart. Convert nothing. Buy a local supply matching the original on voltage, AC or DC, polarity, and current rating equal or higher.

Step down transformer for vintage synth: how to size one

Buy a real transformer, not a converter. The cheap travel devices switch electronically and put out what one guide accurately calls "a modified signal, not a pure sine wave". They are meant for "simple resistive appliances: hair dryers, curling irons, clothes irons" and are explicitly "not recommended for sensitive electronics". The RMS voltage may read 115. The waveform is wrong, and a mains transformer or a motor responds to the shape, not the number on your meter.

Size on nameplate VA with real headroom: the usual guidance is 25 to 50 percent over for resistive loads and at least double the wattage for anything motor-driven, to absorb startup surge. We apply the motor rule to everything with a big toroid or a tape transport, because inrush is brutal and a merely adequate transformer runs hot and hums. A 100 VA synth wants a 300 VA transformer. A tube-era reel-to-reel with three motors wants more than its plate suggests.

50Hz against 60Hz, and what actually cares

Most gear does not care. Linear supplies rectify whatever arrives, and switching supplies were designed for both. Two things care.

The first is anything driven by a synchronous or hysteresis-synchronous motor. Synchronous speed is locked to the supply: a two-pole motor turns 3,000 rpm at 50 hertz and 3,600 at 60. Five to six, and no trimmer fixes it. HammondWiki describes a tone generator driven by a motor that "can only run 'locked' to a multiple of the AC mains frequency of 50 or 60 Hz". A 60 hertz Hammond on 50 hertz mains runs at five sixths speed, a little over three semitones flat across the whole instrument.

The counter-example kills the lazy version of this advice. The Revox A77 service manual states that "the supply can be alternated between 50 and 60 Hz with absolutely no changes in circuitry" and that changing frequency "varies motor speed by less than .05%", because the capstan is electronically regulated rather than mains-locked. The question for a tape machine is not its country of origin but whether the capstan is synchronous or servo-controlled, and the manual will tell you. A Copicat or an RE-501 deserves the same question before it ships.

The second is power transformers. Core flux density is inversely proportional to supply frequency at constant voltage, so a transformer designed for 60 hertz run on 50 sees flux "20% higher and may saturate depending on design". In practice: hotter iron, higher magnetising current, more hum. Usually survivable, occasionally not, and a reason to feel the transformer after an hour.

Drum machines are mostly a non-issue. The classic programmable machines are crystal-clocked, and we could not verify a studio drum machine that derives tempo from mains, so we will not claim one. The mains-locked problem belongs to motors and tonewheel generators.

What goes wrong in transit, and who pays

Almost nobody. Carrier liability is capped by treaty and the cap is low. The Montreal Convention limit for airfreight rose to 26 SDR per kilogramme on 28 December 2024, roughly USD 34 per kilo, so a 30 kilo boxed polysynth is worth about USD 1,020 to the airline whatever you paid. By sea the Hague-Visby Rules cap it at 666.67 SDR per package or 2 SDR per kilogramme, whichever is higher.

Buy all-risks cargo insurance on the full landed value and pack for the handling you will get. Reel-to-reels ship with reels off and heads protected. Anything with a large transformer gets that transformer supported: it is a heavy mass on a thin chassis and it will tear its mounting out in a drop. Spring reverbs are worst, and a BX20E is a tall cabinet of suspended springs designed never to move. Consoles like the Chilton M10/2 or the Studer 169 are volumetrically enormous, and airfreight bills volume.

A 2-inch machine is not an airfreight item, which is why the continental picture in how Africa got multitrack looks as it does, and why BOP Studios was such an outlier. Heavy iron lands where someone with a very large budget decided it should.

Is it cheaper to import or buy locally

Sometimes importing is clearly right, and a guide that pretends otherwise is selling you something. Import when the item does not exist here in any quantity, which covers most modular, most boutique American outboard and anything with a production run under a few thousand. Import when you are buying several things at once and can share one freight and one clearance, because the fixed costs are what hurt a single unit. Import when the item is light, mains-agnostic and cheap to ship, where the multiplier lands nearer 1.3.

Do not import when the thing is heavy, fragile, mains-locked or likely to need work. At 1.6 times sticker you have paid a premium for an unserviced machine you have never heard, with no warranty and no recourse. What the service then costs is a separate number, set out in does vintage gear need recapping. Add it to 1.6 and the arithmetic often stops working.

Which is the argument for what is here already. Our stock has cleared customs, runs on 230 volts at 50 hertz and can be plugged in before you pay. The Juno-60, the Xpander, the Polivoks and the Distressor are in Ballito on the right mains, and none of them will teach you what a 100 volt transformer smells like.

What we could not verify

• The ECOWAS CET band for 92.07, 85.18 and 85.19. Neither Nigeria Customs nor ECOWAS publishes an accessible line-level schedule.
• Nigeria's 4 percent FOB charge as at September 2026. Verified suspended on 16 September 2025, nothing published since that we could find.
• Every Ghanaian levy rate. GRA lists eleven impositions and publishes none.
• Any South African clearing agent's tariff. The figure in our table is an assumption, labelled as one.
• Whether "transaction value" in section 65(8) equals the FOB customs value. It reads that way to us.
• Any specific drum machine or sequencer whose clock derives from mains frequency.

Sources

• SARS Schedule 1 Part 1, Customs Duty
• SARS Schedule 1 Part 2B, Ad Valorem Excise
• SARS SE-ADV-02, Ad Valorem Excise
• SARS, VAT on imported goods
• SARS SC-CR-A-03, Valuation of Imports
• SARS, customs code 70707070
• SARS Customs Exchange Rates
• Customs and Excise Act 1964, s65
• ITAC, Import and Export Control brochure
• ITAC, Import Control FAQs
• EAC Common External Tariff 2022
• PwC, Kenya taxes
• ECOTIS, ECOWAS CET
• Forvis Mazars, Nigeria Tax Act 2025
• DHL, import duties in Nigeria
• NCS on the 4% FOB directive
• GRA, Customs Tariffs and Levies
• GRA, VAT on Imports and Exports
• Crowe, Ghana VAT Reform 2026
• World Standards, SA mains voltage
• Travel Power Pro, converters
• Engineering ToolBox, synchronous speed
• HammondWiki, Tone Generator
• ReVox A77 Service Manual
• GoHz, 50Hz and 60Hz transformers
• Avalon Risk, air freight liability limits
• Hague-Visby Rules limits