Equipment in pictures.

This is my equipment with pictures I can find on the web, so to keep this interesting. 
This is all Equipment which  I own in studio, either purchased new or second hand. I will try to add pricing as I go along (this is an edit I've been asked to do on another site, so I will give you current pricing if you purchased these items today, many of these items have held their value pretty well. Pricing will be from ebay and GAK (p.s: the Heco lab2 speakers are not available anywhere due to their rarity, but have an approximate value to share/plus I'll put the new price when they were available in the early 80's. These speakers were actually given to us by a customer which couldn't pay for his studio time, and to honest we got an amazing deal). But anyway here is a list, with pictures, pricing and description of what I own in my studio and living room (the play back room!)  


Firstly Keyboards: Yamaha Tyros Workstation: This is a 61 key keyboard, with auto accompaniment, Vocoder (voice changer), extensive live effects section (there is a jack on the back so you can plug a guitar into it and run it through the effects!), it has a 16 channel MIDI recorder and a quite extensive synthesiser and control adjustment facility (via a computer). I purchased mine for around £900, which came with a stand and a 2.1 surround speaker system! as well as all brackets to mount it to the keyboard.

Then speakers: KRK Rokit G3 6's: I bought these about five months ago and they are great for there completely flat frequency response and non colouration of the sound. They were recommended to me for electronic music and they excel at dance and trance music and have the ability to crank the bass up for playing back drum and bass sounds and samples to great effect! They cost me £150 each, which isn't to bad for what you get. They are around 65 watts and have a built in amplifier and have been notably used in the main london studio of Amy Winehouse.

Heco Lab 2 Reference speakers:
These are two pairs of Heco reference speakers from the 1980's which were sold for a year and half and then mysteriously discontinued, there is nothing wrong with the units and are some of the best reference speakers I've ever come across; and I used to work for three years in a professional speaker, surround sounds and component systems shop in my hometown, so have a good ear for quality speakers. These were in excess of around £3000, each! when they were sold in 1983, they were purchased by this dudes dad for five grand in a clearance sale, which he got two pairs of these speakers, plus a 18" 200 Watt subwoofer (which we also now own). These speakers ere a git to get in the house as they weigh in excess of 100 KG each and are nearly as tall as me (I'm 6' 2"). I came across one of these puppies on a auction site a few months back and it went for £1,800 which ait bas since they are over twenty years old. Ebay has never seen a Lab 2 or above (yes this is the small series of the Heco Lab line up and subsequently the cheapest!) These also came with a Nakamichi amplifier, which is near;y he next item on the list. Next is two book shelf speakers!

Kef Cresta 10 Reference speakers:

These are my first pro speakers which were given to me by my father back in the late 90's, they are 100 watt each and they pack a heck of a punch. I think they were about £200 a pair back then, although you can find these for around £30-50 on eBay nowhere days.
  

Amplifier: Nakamichi PA-7 x2

This is another oddity of my collection, these amps were received at the same time as the Heco Lab 2 speakers (Above). They were around £7k when they hit the market, they were bought by the same dudes dad for about £4500 for the pair, but with the Heco speakers (so that was one expensive purchase!) these apparently according to the manual have about 126 transistors per channel, which is a bit pathetic by today's standard (since you can get chips with several million transistors packed into them these days, but back then this was a marvel of technology! You can get the same unis on eBay nowhere days for about £800-£1200 depending on condition and if you want the Caps to work or have a electronics project to do? (like one of my units powers on but has no sound, and its probably a bad cap causing the issue, so that's in for repair in the next few weeks!

Then onto Daw equipment and control interfaces:

Cubase 8:

Cubase Elements 8 is my DAW choice (DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation), this is my primary sequencer, arranger, sampler, sound processor and mastering system (even though we have a separate computer with steinberg Wavelab installed on for mastering of my projects. When I went to college I trained in cubase and protools, I like sequencing things and Protools is great for recording things like instrumentation, but not very good for sequencing. So I trained heavily on Cubase so that's the program I went out and purchased when I left college and have kept on upgrading ever since (whenever the pricing is right, as cubase 9 is out now but the price hasn't sufficiently come down yet so I'm not prepared to upgrade just yet. This is kind of the main hub for all my virtual instruments and I tend to switch it on instead of standalone versions of VST's because if I want to make a song it's seamless! My version cost around £200

Akai MPC Studio:
Thi sis my toy I got for Christmas with a bit of money from my parents and a bit of money from sample pack sales. It comes with a 16 pad controller and a DAW to program everything with. It's mainly used as a drum machine now in my setup, but can be used to chop up samples and songs for use in other productions. This cost £330 from GAK.

Accordion:

Weltmeister Diana 120 Bass:
This is a 120 bass Accordion with five couplers on the treble side and five couplers on the bass side for sound selection, it belonged and was purchased by my grandad and was given to me in inheritance when he died. its been valued for insurance at £4000 and has been revalued at the possible place of origin (one of the only and mai accordion sop in the UK, Allodi Accordions in London) This one has a custom faceplate on it and just the faceplate which is gilded with gold mesh, has been valued at about alf the original price of the unit. Accordions aint cheap but this one ise pretty expensive as they go. But it's what's called a triple reed instrument (so air blows through tree sets of reeds per sound, so the max number of reeds operating at the same time can be nine sets of reeds), so this Accordion sounds absolutely amazing!

Soundcard:
This is my soundcard which came with a powered condenser microphone, headphones, cables, and software which I think was a light version of ableton live which I never downloaded as I don't particularly like using that software very much. This was a very good kit and was bought for £90, which is a bargain!

Samplers:

Yamaha A3000:
My favourite sampler due to its key mapping features and psycho acoustic effects! I've installed a small hard disk in mie and its racked up and sees use most days.

 

Akai S6000:

This is my old Akai sampler which I've now kind of replaced with the MPC studio, but will still use occasionally. This has a lot of features on it. and its an excellent sampler. But my unit may or may not be sold as I may not use it anymore, i'll see what happens?

VST'is

Nexus:
One of my favourite Dance and trance synths, one synth that I know Avicii uses.has excellent piano sound on-board and the trance gate is not to bad of a feature. major con is that you can't make your own voices.

Serum:
This si very good at Dubstep sounds and is partially sample based. The pads are pretty wicked!

Kontakt 5.6:
This is a samples based synth and a very good one at that. I have a piano which is like a real grand piano for this sampler and I have a wicked orchestral sample pack with violins, brass and harps...
Like my outboard samplers I love making new samples and key mapping them into Kontakt, to put into my tunes! I like the ease of use!

Diva:
This is my new synth which so far is good for lots of different kinds of EDM and have several coice packs to trawl trough so I may do a demo and review of this soon!

Sylenth:
Again this is one for the synths I got for christmas, so far it's been good for my trance music, but I for my full in depth view s you will have to wait until I do the testing and demo video.

Hydra:
This is a really retro VST as VST's go,m very good for Drum And bass and things you want grimy sounds on.

Sub boom bass:
I use this primaily for my D&B projects as it is very subwoofer friendly and adds lots of bass to my EDM tracks. This is a fairly cheap VST as they go.

Predator:

I got this for christmas, as it was cheap so wait until I do a review on this puppy!

VST'es

Antares Auto tune:
Very good at re-pitching vocals. Cher and T-pain used these kind auto tunes but back then they were hardware retuners

Ozone 7:
I use this for mastering nearly my songs, very good for giving my tracks added shine!

Audio Thing-Exciter/Valve emulator:
Good for adding warmth.

Voxengo Voxformer:
Another vocal processor, but this one can remove a lot of vocal mistakes like hisses and plosives.