A tidy slice of Sony hi-fi history, the MU-E151 is a graphic equalizer built to fine-tune a home system. Per-channel sliders let you carve the response to taste, and it...

Before every laptop shipped with a reverb plugin that sounded fine, Lexicon was building the boxes that defined what expensive sounded like. The LXP-15 is the half-rack sibling that snuck...

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 Sherman Filterbank is the cult Belgian effect that producers reach for when they want something to sound dangerous. Run drums, synths, vocals, anything through its screaming, self-oscillating multimode filters...

Waldorf built the Q for people who wanted German engineering with an attitude problem. This is a virtual-analog synth that hits like a hardware monster: fat, precise oscillators, that famously...

Maxon spent the 1980s quietly building the circuits inside the Ibanez pedals everyone worships, then bolted their own name onto this 1U rack delay. The DMD2000 is the result: a...

Built at the peak of the 1970s "receiver wars", the Sansui AU-11000 was the company's no-compromise flagship integrated, and it shows. 110 watts a side, dual fully-independent channels from power...

The Ensoniq DP/4+ is really four effects processors in a single rack, units A, B, C and D, each a complete 24-bit stereo multi-FX in its own right, with four...

Before digital reverb took over, the MICMIX Master Room was the spring reverb serious studios reached for: a big, lush, three-dimensional spring sound far richer than the tanks built into...

The Warm Audio WA76 is a faithful, fully-discrete take on the legendary 1176 FET compressor, the one that has slammed drums, vocals and bass on countless hit records. Lightning-fast attack,...

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 legendary dbx Boom Box: an all-analog subharmonic synthesizer that doesn't just boost your bass, it manufactures it. Feed it a signal and it tracks the bass already there, synthesizes...

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...

Roland's first stab at semi-modular synthesis, from 1975, and quietly one of the best-sounding things the company ever built. This is a three-module rig: the 101 keyboard synth at the...

Behringer's CRAVE took one look at the price of a vintage mono synth and lopped off a couple of zeros. Under the hood: a proper analog 3340 oscillator, a creamy...

The Roland JSQ-60 is a slice of early-80s sequencing history: a digital keyboard recorder that captures your performances and plays them back to compatible Roland synths via DCB and MIDI....

The Watkins (WEM) Copicat is the original British tape echo: warm, characterful slapback and repeats from real moving tape, beloved since the late 50s by everyone from rockabilly guitarists to...

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...

Roland's 12-bit rack sampler from the late 80s. The S-330 packs the same characterful converters as its keyboard siblings into a tidy 1U box, complete with that gritty, slightly lo-fi...

When your MIDI rig sprouts more modules than your desk can handle, the Roland M-240R steps in: twenty-four channels of line mixing in a rack, with the clean, quiet Roland...

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...

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 Jugg Box DPM-48 is an obscure slice of Italian rhythm history: a digital drum machine with a big blue knob, a wall of buttons and a lo-fi character all...

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...