A gorgeous slab of mid-century Japanese test equipment, the Leader LSG-11 is an RF signal generator with a big sweeping dial, chunky bakelite knobs and that unmistakable grey-hammer finish. Whether...
The Sound Technology 1500A is proper pro-audio test gear, built to measure and align tape machines back when tape was king. Wow and flutter, speed, distortion, frequency response, it does...
The Sony VT-M5 is the kind of gadget you would expect in a Cold War surveillance van or on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Billed as an Audioscope...
Two genuine Cornell-Dubilier decade capacitor boxes, all bakelite, brass and beautifully worn labels. Built to dial in precise capacitance on the bench, they are now the kind of characterful curiosity...
The Sony SRA-3 is the all-valve recording amplifier that quietly became one of the most hunted secret weapons in modern psych. Built in the 1960s to ride alongside Sony's reel-to-reel...
Ask a roomful of engineers to name one compressor they cannot live without and a scary number will say the Distressor. Since 1995, Dave Derr's EL8 has been the go-to...
FATSO stands for Full Analog Tape Simulator and Optimizer, which is a lot of acronym for a box whose actual job is making digital recordings sound like they went through...
The RZ-1 is Casio's 1986 oddball masterpiece: a 12-bit PCM drum machine with a built-in sampler, and one of the cheapest ways into that crunchy, grainy 80s sampling sound. You...
The Marantz 2130 is one of the most beautiful tuners ever made: a quartz-locked FM/AM stereo tuner with Marantz's mesmerising oscilloscope display showing signal strength, multipath and tuning, all wrapped...
A genuine rarity. The REVAC NM-88 is a professional 8-channel microphone preamplifier from Japan's pro-audio world, the kind of obscure, well-built workhorse that surfaces only occasionally on Japanese auction sites...
A lovely standalone TEAC record/playback amplifier from the reel-to-reel golden age: the electronics half of a classic tape setup, with a big glowing VU meter, monitor switching, tape-speed EQ and...
Don't let the modest price fool you, the 18Xs MkII is a seriously good single-channel front end. A transformer-coupled, Class-A microphone preamp with up to 65dB of gain, a high-impedance...
The Auratone 5C is the legendary little mixcube that engineers from Motown onward used to check that a mix translates: full-range, single-driver, brutally honest. If it sounds good on an...
Out of Austin, Texas came a graphic EQ that quietly became the studio standard while flashier rivals grabbed the magazine covers. The White Instruments 4400 skips the fragile faders and...
Roger Linn's LinnDrum (often miscalled the LM-2) is the sound of an entire decade: the sampled-drum machine that put real kicks, snares and hats into pop, R&B and new wave...
The rackmount Tube Driver, and the one to have. This is the TDR-101 from the era when B.K. Butler and Chandler built them in partnership, widely held to be the...
The Nakamichi 630 is a rare tuner-preamplifier from Nakamichi's celebrated era: superb engineering, an understated black fascia and the clean, musical sound the brand is famous for.A handsome and unusual...
When Access dropped the Virus C in 2002, it didn't so much join the synth world as colonise it. This is the desktop module that turned up on countless trance...
If one synth defines the lush, shimmering pads of the 1980s, it is the Juno-60. Six voices of digitally-controlled analog oscillators, a gorgeous 24dB resonant low-pass filter sharing the same...
The top of Akai's classic S3000 line: 16-bit/44.1 sampling, that unmistakable Akai filter, and a build that simply keeps running. This one is fully wired on the back, eight individual...
Otari built the MX-5050 for radio stations and studios that needed a tape machine to just work, every day, for decades, and that is exactly what it did. Balanced XLR...
The Quad FM4 completes the classic 80s Quad stack: a refined FM tuner with that smooth Quad sound and the matching grey-and-orange styling. Hook it up to a Quad 34...
