Gear In-depth & Longer Blogs

When we first got involved with Dawner Prince about selling their (then) new Binson pedal, the Boonar, I was impressed by the features that they'd managed to fit in such a small pedal, but felt the Boonar was too bright/clean and not quite right at higher feedback settings. Zoran from Dawner Prince was swift to react to our comments and an upgraded version of the Boonar swiftly followed. I soon became very attached indeed to my Boonar (which has now journeyed back to Croatia a couple of times for tweaks). I now use it all the time together with the Echosex 2º Ltd. The Echosex...

We have a heavyweight consignment of mouth-watering vintage gear just arrived hot from the studio of Mike "Prince Fatty" Pelanconi. He is undoubtedly on the vanguard of the new wave of dub producers now following and building on the traditions and techniques of dub. We're long time fans (see his live dubs on youtube!) so getting our hands on some of his essential studio tools is a source of much excitement. Some items will be sold via the site, others by a sealed bid auction ending on Wednesday 9th November at 12pm GMT. First up, and requiring no introduction to Soundgas regulars, is his stunning Grampian Type 636...

** 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...

We are incredibly-excited to announce our partnership with Clouds Hill: we have the worldwide exclusive dealership for their incredible Floppy Disc Delay (FDD). Read on for a detailed review from Tony's first revelations and explorations of this effect. We had the last two of the intial run of ten completely hand-tooled Clouds Hill Echoes [now sold!], and are now taking orders for the main production run of the next 20 Floppy Disc Delay units which are in stock now. You can see our ECHO in action the youtube demo below, as well as on several demos on our Instagram feed. Another Analogue Echo? The Floppy Disc...

See this amp for sale (or quite possibly sold) and the full set of detailed photos here. Only ten of these 'Black Star' Westminsters are thought to have been produced in the late 50s. So-called because the cabinet had a black with white stars covering - long gone on this one, sadly - see below for what it should look like (image courtesy of the peerless vintage hofner site). Unusually, this 14w Westminster is powered by a pair of EL90 (6AQ5) valves, giving it a warmer, mellow sound. According to the late great Charlie Watkins, this made it 'popular with jazz players' at the...

We recently had the Grampian 636 you see below come up for sale by sealed bids. This blog post is about that unit, as well as some history and technical information about these superb, legendary machines. If you are looking to buy a Grampian or have one to sell in any condition please get in touch. UPDATE: we compiled all the demos of this Grampian into this Youtube playlist. I first encountered one of these unprepossessing grey boxes while trawling ebay many years ago. As ever, I was looking for inexpensive old effects that would sound different to the run of the mill...

Or a journey from "Yet another overdrive pedal" to "This pedal has inspired me to play guitar more than any other I've bought in recent years"...   When Gurus’ headman Chicco informed me that their next pedal after the Echosex 2º was to be a twin overdrive pedal based on a classic Marshall valve amp, I wasn’t exactly overawed. “Yet another overdrive pedal,” I thought to myself as I tacked a couple onto our re-order for yet more stock of the fabulous Echosex 2º LTD. Named the 1959 after the legendary Marshall, and Double Decker because it sports dual channels. The...

There are probably as many answers to this question as there are different models of spring reverb out there: even the most unpromising cheap plastic box with tiny springs can shine when you're looking for a different flavour. We happened to have a stack of vintage spring reverbs all in one place so thought we'd put them all against each other and produce: The Soundgas Snare Springathon - 13 Spring Reverbs head to head with a Roland TR-808 snare… (You may have already seen this video - we made it a few months ago now - but we'd always intended to add our thoughts...

Vintage Japanese Tape Echo & Spring Reverb Update:  Mid-seventies Japanese manufacturer Hawk Technical Works Co Ltd put out a range of tape echoes and spring reverbs branded Mirano and then Hawk aimed squarely at domestic home recordists. We were intrigued and decided to get hold of as many different models as possible and try them all out. The results so far are documented below - these are great machines with useful features, and interesting creative possibilities especially once pushed beyond their comfort zone. We're definitely keeping examples of some of them for the studio. This is a run through of our...

We found all sorts of things we'd forgotten about, and fell in love with some new things that we'd never used before. Pete from Teleman and Ben from Elephant Disco came down to help us get organised and so huge thanks have to go to them for kicking us into action. It's a facebook post so hopefully most of you can see it, but if you can't and you want to see pictures of a lot of vintage gear then give us a shout. We also made a load of video demos (thanks again to Pete for the great guitar...

  Yes - look at that lot! Our good friend Ronnie Vannucci took me on a Facetime tour of his fine basement studio last week and he's let us have a couple of pictures to post on here. He's amassed a stunning collection of desirable gear, including a whole heap of echoes, vintage and modern. Having initially come to us for a fully-serviced Roland RE-501, he got bitten by the Binson disc echo bug and added a holy trinity of Binsons to mix the new Big Talk album with Alan Moulder. As well as a stunning Binson Echorec 2 (second from top left), Ronnie...

Say hello to the brand new reincarnation of the legendary Binson Echorec in pedal form. From Gurus Amps in Italy we present the Gurus Echosex 2° - we've been working up to stocking new products for a while and this the first brand new gear addition to our range; it looks stunning and... it works! You can order it and find more of Tony's initial thoughts on it in the listing here. We're in the process of writing a full review of this unit. To get you started there's some more information below taken from the manufacturer, and our first two...

We had our inaugural Soundgas Christmas night out last week, delivering a newly-restored Binson Echorec 2 to none other than Pete Townshend at The Who Hits 50 gig in Nottingham. Pete very kindly arranged VIP tickets for us all and met up for a chat backstage afterwards. The Who were on top form, playing for nearly two and a half hours: all killer, no filler. A truly memorable night: not sure how we top that next Christmas...   Pete had been searching for a Binson for many years - ever since he saw Syd Barrett with Pink Floyd at the UFO club in 1967: "When I saw him...

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.

The 1963 AC30B is back from a total strip down/rebuild and sounding as fantastic as I'd hoped. All original parts are fine - speakers, transformers, footswitch etc - valves are Brimar/Mullard and test good. Case is very tatty (someone painted it black a long time ago when fawn wasn't cool), but structurally-sound: no fittings remain though (badge is new). Grille cloth is original - has a small tear which will have a very basic mend on to stop any further damage. Pots dated Sept/Nov 1962, Woden transformers Dec 62, Speakers early 63. It's not been touched for about 30 years before now....