The Yamaha CA-X1 is a gorgeous slice of late-70s silver-faced hi-fi: a natural-sound integrated amplifier with twin output-level VU meters, a satisfying heavy volume wheel, and that clean, slightly warm...

A genuinely rare piece of British studio history. The Chilton M10/2 Mk6 was the final and most refined version of Chilton's celebrated Quiet Mixer series, a 10-input, 2-output portable console...

No more mystery box: this is the Yamaha B-5, a 240-watt-per-channel Natural Sound power amplifier and one of the most serious separates Yamaha built in the era. Released in 1979...

The 1604-VLZ Pro is the mixer that earned Mackie its reputation: sixteen channels of clean, high-headroom analog with the famous XDR mic preamps, flexible four-bus routing, musical 3-band EQ and...

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...

When you need to track a whole band at once without remortgaging, the Tascam US-1641 is the quiet hero: sixteen inputs in, four out, eight mic preamps with phantom, all...

Akai's late-90s reinvention of the sampler: a big graphical screen, a computer-style workflow, and that clean 16-bit Akai character. This particular unit is loaded to the gills, RAM maxed at...

The EPS 16 Plus is Ensoniq's 1990 sampling workstation and a low-key legend of golden-era hip-hop. It samples at 16-bit with that warm, slightly gritty Ensoniq character, and its killer...

When the synth collection outgrows the desk, the MM-200 is the answer: sixteen channels of line mixing with EQ, effect sends and stereo returns, all in a tidy rack. Built...

Pro monitoring control for your desktop, and a project-studio staple. The PreSonus Monitor Station V2 lets you switch instantly between up to four stereo sources and three sets of monitor...

The Roland SH-2 is a cult 1979 monosynth and a genuine bass monster: two fat VCOs (with sub-oscillators) feeding that creamy Roland filter, a flexible envelope and LFO, and the...

The S1100 took the industry-standard S1000 and added onboard effects, SCSI, and a hard-disk option, the sampler that defined pro 16-bit sound at the turn of the 90s. This one...

If a record sounds good on NS-10s, it sounds good everywhere, which is why these white-coned Yamahas ended up on the meter bridge of nearly every serious studio on earth....

Before everyone had a thousand soft-samplers in a laptop, you had a rack, a floppy disk, and twelve glorious bits. The Akai S950 is the box that chopped the breaks...

The Quad 34 is the elegant preamplifier at the heart of Quad's celebrated 1980s system. Compact, beautifully made and famously musical, it offers disc, radio and tape inputs, tilt and...

The Yamaha MG124C is the workhorse 12-channel analog mixer that turns up everywhere for good reason: clean Yamaha mic preamps, musical 3-band EQ, built-in compression on the mono channels and...

Here is a slice of 1970s hi-fi ambition you rarely see: a discrete four-channel integrated amplifier from JVC's Victor line, complete with a built-in quadraphonic decoder and circuitry to handle...

The Yamaha R1000 is one of the first affordable digital reverbs, and it has a sound all its own: a handful of reverb modes, simple knobs, and an early-digital character...

The 160S is dbx founder David Blackmer's high-end reimagining of his own legendary 160 VCA compressor, hand-built in the boutique Blue Series. A true-stereo (or dual-mono) VCA compressor with that...

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...

Ask a roomful of mix engineers about a do-anything stereo compressor and Elysia's Xpressor keeps coming up. This is a discrete Class-A stereo compressor built in Germany to mastering-grade standards,...

The CA-2000 sits at the top of Yamaha's revered CA integrated line, the bigger, brawnier sibling of the CA-1000 and the amp Yamaha built by feeding its B-1/C-1 separate-amp know-how...

Before everyone could afford a rack of delays, the SDE-1000 was how you got real Roland digital echo without remortgaging the studio. It has that smooth, musical Roland repeat that...

The Focusrite Liquid Channel is what happens when a British console legend decides to bottle every classic preamp and compressor ever made and pour them into one 2U box. Using...