Vintage Music Gear Expert
I’m part of Soundgas, a growing business immersed in restoring & selling old music equipment - rare & unusual synths, other instruments, effects, boxes that make odd noises. We’re tucked away in the Derbyshire hills but have grown to a point where we are working with many of the best producers, musicians and studios worldwide. We have a very active social media presence sharing the sounds and stories of this stuff that has shaped music for the last 50 or 60 years.
I’m not a tech - I’m more shepherd than vet to these cranky old sheep - however, I am fascinated by the “crumbling edge” (found at the opposite end of things to the bleeding edge) where knowledge, expertise and technology is being lost at a rapid pace. The first wave of engineers who were working when this gear was new are retiring (or heading for the great workshop in the sky); or in some cases the things were so uncommon and so idiosyncratic that no one ever really knew how to fix them! This is the survival I’m interested in, with a particular interest in the earliest moments of new tech - the true pioneers where the designers had no map and were making everything up as they went along. I’ll be bringing along some examples of these trail-blazers from when the first time digital entered the world of analogue music gear, and talking about what we do, telling some stories, and making some strange noises.