Gear In-depth & Longer Blogs — Synthesizer

I first laid hands on a synth in 1981 - a very brief ‘go’ on an older boy’s MS-10 (I was shown how to do the intro to Silver Machine by Hawkwind - great excitement). However, living in rural Derbyshire, transport was more important to this teenager than playing space rock anthems, and funds went on a succession of motorbikes and cars. My pals in Sheffield with its 2p bus fares could spend any spare money on wondrous noise making devices. In 1987, I wandered into Carlsbro Sound Centre in Mansfield to finally buy a synth: I was sold a...

  In which Tony meets Nils Frahm and his Junos and RE-501s, and Nils meets a Soundgas Binson, and The Magic Typewriter... Barely a day goes by when I don’t consider how lucky we are to live and work in the hills of Derbyshire; beautiful countryside, peaceful villages, miles away from the noise and pollution of urban life. But being a hundred-plus miles from London does have its disadvantages: we miss most of the one-off gigs and special events that tend to only happen in the metropolis. Not so this month: a week ago last Friday I got to hang...

Regeneration: Synths Beyond Sustainability by Tony Miln The recent climate change coverage in the media is a wake up call that we ignore at our peril (looking at you, President Trump). I've written about the importance of us educating and training new technicians to ensure the future of the classic instruments and gear that we all use and cherish, but is there also an environmental argument for doing so? Most modern synths, effects and amps are surely more energy efficient than their predecessors, but what is the cost of continuing to deplete precious resources by churning out an endless stream...

Synthfest 2018 Report - Soundgas Bring The Noise This weekend we returned to Sheffield for Synthfest UK 2018 organised by Sound On Sound Magazine. While we’d agreed to bring a more sensible amount of gear than last year, there was still more than a Volvo estate full - even before we realised we’d missed out the Roland SH-5… More information below, but we managed to get out from behind the stand and film some highlights for our new IGTV channel - click on the stills to view (part three featuring the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble's performance of John Carpenter's Escape...

The EMS Synthi HiFli by Tony Miln If you’re a guitar pedal nerd, then the EMS Synthi HiFli is the pinnacle of desirability: it is the stuff of legend; a rare and much-mythologised beast that is seldom-sighted - sporting many sliders with alluring names. In his book, ‘Analog Man’s Guide To Vintage Effects’, Tom Hughes officially anointed the HiFli king of kings - rarest of the rare - big chief amongst the hen’s teeth. In short, the EMS Synthi HiFli is the ultimate vintage guitar ‘pedal’; good examples are very few and far between. I set out many years ago now...

Part two of our series about the people who can fix all this old gear, people who really KNOW it inside out. And it’s also about what can be done about the slow but steady loss of this deep knowledge and real, hands-on experience from the world of vintage audio. Are you a tech looking for work reading this? Or maybe you want to learn (and are local to us)? More info below, but we definitely want to hear from you! This weekend I Iearned that we lost John Leimseider - a lovely, warm and generous man and a true...

This blog is not a another guide to Synthi AKS, but rather it's about my experience encountering and using one of these remarkable instruments while "testing" the one shown above following a full restoration. This process gave me pause to consider what it is that makes some pieces of gear so completely captivating and endlessly inspiring. A longer video demo of my AKS experience features at the bottom of this post... (And just before we get into it, special mention to our remarkable in-house techs Doctor Huw and Chris for their tireless work to bring this beauty back to life, and also to Keith...

A couple of weeks ago, our intrepid explorer Gid ventured to Bradford to delve beneath the Science & Media Museum as part of workshop on 'Objects of Electronic Sound and Music'. At the museum they have begun, as of two years ago, a collection of music tech covering everything from recording to live performance and, although it’s still early days, they already have some very interesting pieces. When we heard what they were doing and were invited to see inside the stores, and to be part of working out what to do with it all, we definitely wanted to help. Thanks to museum...

This is the story of how we sold Space Echoes to Roland, our trip to London to bring the vintage gear noise to the Boss exhibition launch and came to meet Miki-san, CEO of the mighty Roland Corporation. Pictures are of the venue, the epic exhibition of Boss & Roland gear, and our workshop set up; you can see a full album of shots from the weekend here.   Following the initial request from Roland/Boss asking us to supply serviced Space Echoes for their Cause And Effects show (celebrating 40 years of Boss guitar effects), our involvement grew, leading to us being...

This is a post all about Mike Hedges' CS-80 that we sold. We've sold this one (and another since then); if you want to know when the next one is coming in then our mailing list is the place to be: Sign up now to be kept updated on incoming synths. We are very excited to be handling the commission sale of this stunning instrument from Mike Hedges. It has quite an illustrious history having been used on many classic recordings that Mike produced. It was also toured for a while, so while it isn't in perfect condition cosmetically, most importantly - especially so...

** UPDATE! WE'RE COMING BACK TO SYNTHFEST FOR 2017. BIGGER, BETTER, VINTAGER! The line up & exhibitor list is superb - find out more and book tickets HERE. ** Saturday October 1st was the inaugural Synthfest UK show at the Octagon Centre in Sheffield organised by Sound On Sound magazine as part of the Sensoria festival. Incorporating manufacturer/dealer displays and a modular synth meet, this was a celebration of all things synth, appropriately-located in Synth City. We headed up the road with a big stack of Soundgas gear to take a stand at our first full-scale show. By Friday night we were all set for the...

You may be aware (just possibly, although they kept it very quiet) that Moog have recently started manufacturing a very carefully recreated modern version of the iconic Minimoog and named it the Model D. While they have gone to great lengths to recreate the original in modern form (and as authentically as possible), inevitably some have suggested it might have been more appropriate to call it the Model E, differing as it does in several significant aspects from the later incarnations of the original Model D upon which it is based. The more cynical members of the online synth community [surely not? Ed] may have...

UPDATE! 27 Feb 2014 - We've finally made a quick video demo of an Auto Orchestra, still just scratching the surface of what it can do (but it's made us sure we need to get one for our studio):

see our MTI Auto Orchestra demo video here

In our continuing quest to explore the outer reaches of analogue esoterica, we were very pleased to get hold of this incredible (and slightly bonkers) MTI Auto Orchestra or "CR78-On-Steriods" as it's known here at Soundgas HQ.