If you’ve just picked up an Oberheim Matrix 6R — or you’re thinking about it — you’re looking at one of the most underrated analogue rack synthesizers ever made. Not the flashiest piece of gear from the mid-1980s, not the most famous, but quietly one of the most capable. It sat in professional studios worldwide, doing serious work on serious records, while the Yamaha DX7 got all the press. We recently completed a service on an Oberheim Matrix 6R here in Perth, and it’s a good

Part one of a two part article looking into this icon synthesizer. Meta Description: The Roland Jupiter-8 arrived in 1981 before MIDI existed — and it still outsounds everything. Discover its rivals, its legacy, and the records that made history. Cast your mind back to 1981. There are no laptops on the studio desk. No soft synths. No drag-and-drop anything. If you wanted polyphonic analog synthesis, you bought an enormous, expensive, hand-built machine — carried it carefully,

If you've ever wondered why certain recordings from the early 1980s have that impossibly lush, three-dimensional quality — that sense that the sound is somehow bigger than the room — there's a good chance a Roland SDD-320 Dimension D was somewhere in the signal chain. This unassuming 2U rack unit, released in 1979, became one of the most coveted pieces of studio hardware ever made. It's still in high demand today, it's still being used on professional recordings, and units i

Several of these Pioneer SA-9100s have passed over the work bench over the years, and as owner reviews will profess, such a beautiful,...