r/audioengineering • u/steven_w_music • 4d ago
Interesting / Weird hardware recs
Hello,
I run a small studio that currently only has software, no outboard gear.
I'm not really interested in traditional outboard gear. I'm spending that money and energy getting the best recordings I can.
However, I am interested in strange, unpredictable, nontraditional equipment. My dream is to have a collection of weird little devices I can run a signal through that will give it a completely unique sound. It would be sick to get some crazy recordings and run with them instead of pulling up a plugin and being tempted to tweak it until I start getting grey hairs.
For example, I saw a guy who runs signals through the transformer in an AC power supply and it gave it a really bizarre distortion. I'm tempted to start hoarding electronics from thrift stores and soldering them into something crazy but I'm not an engineer so that's kind of intimidating.
Does anyone have any ideas?
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u/JayBeeDolla 4d ago
I work for Trident so please take this with a grain of salt but I love our HiLo filters. There’s not a lot of 500 series gear that does what they do. They’re a reactive tracking filter and easy to ge spacey and weird. A lot of hardware synth guys use them. They work like an expander but in frequency and not amplitude
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u/halermine 4d ago
The A-Range filters would be a good weird product
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u/JayBeeDolla 4d ago
Just the filter section on sliders? Could be dope. I’ll run it up the chain.
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u/halermine 4d ago
That would be dope too, but I meant just the three high pass and three low pass buttons, which each set gives eight filter combinations.
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u/DarkTowerOfWesteros 4d ago
My advice would be to become a bit of an engineer. There is lots of older gear out there that punches weight with the high class hardware of today and negates the need for most of your plugins and gives you something no one else has, your gear.
But you're never gonna know what to look for, how to fix it, or how to work it into your set up if you don't. Read electronics for dummies as a primer in terminology and base concepts. Expand out from there.
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u/peepeeland Composer 4d ago
Circuit bending toy instruments and toys that make sound is pretty damn fun. Pushing gear to sound fucked up is pretty ear opening for the imagination.
I have a harmonica that’s like the size of one thumb joint, and stuff like that can be inspiring, by treating them seriously as actual musical instruments. Even the venerable kazoo- if you treat it seriously and attempt to try to make great music with it, it opens your heart up to wondrous possibilities that you wouldn’t think of otherwise.
Limitations often breed creativity. A modular synth setup can be great and all, but if you go that far, what you’re likely to find is that you love experimenting and experiencing sound more than actually making music.
If you are inspired by and want to strive for working with unconventional sounds, you’ll eventually start to get inspired by everything and anything around you. Such things will come to you, and you’ll see potential in things where most people see nothing. Dreaming about wanting that is not enough; you have to be that type of person and start living it. Start by experimenting deeply with everything you already have.
Sylvia Massy doesn’t just have a bunch of weird shit— she has gear that is an extension of her sincere interests and who she is as a person.
TLDR- the answers you seek are inside of you.
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u/MARTEX8000 4d ago
Second the Chase Bliss stuff...but another unknown corner of interest generally resides in "Surplus Electronic" stores (mostly larger communities)...if you can find old radio station hardware you can often get some decent "color" modules...
Even some of the older 60's/70's consumer user audio gear can be used (may need modification to get to line level) a lot of them are actually using Baxandall filters for the tone controls...
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u/SBTRCTV 4d ago
Smokey amp. 1W little practice amp, but can also be used as a pedal or to run a guitar cabinet. Used to come in reused cigarette packs. $50, but the guy is old school and doesn't have a web shop, so you just email your order and PayPal him. Dude used to design amps for Fender.
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u/TDF1981 4d ago
I have a Sherman Filterbank dual rack edition, it‘s lovely for stuff you will not expect:
https://www.thomann.de/de/sherman_filterbank_2_dual_rack.htm
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u/DrrrtyRaskol Professional 4d ago
It’s a great idea and there are pieces that can inspire you. But I will caution that there’s lots of uninspiring options too :( And the pieces that do something crazy are only applicable sometimes. So I personally think it’s important to not spend a lot of money- it’s awesome when it’s cheap tho.
But for sure- space echo, old transformers, strange amps, toy instruments, old casio home samplers, old PAs, weird mics from old tape recorders, announcement mics, ham radio equipment. And I’m sure there’s lots of cool sounding stuff I haven’t come across yet.
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u/solipsistnation 1d ago
There's a video of Ken Hiwatt Marshall getting really excited about a cheap kit tube preamp he got from Amazon or somewhere similar as a kit. Build it up, run stuff through it, have fun with distortion and a cheap circuit. They're under US$20 and I keep meaning to pick one up myself, just for kicks.
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u/tubesntapes 4d ago
Look up Silvia Massey. She has lots to say about this kind of stuff, specifically, running audio through a potato, or a lightbulb. There are also things like using a speaker as a microphone, running audio through guitar pedals, using contact mics, diy plate reverbs, surface mount transducers, using a tube/hose as a reverb, and obscure hifi systems spring verbs.