Fun topic. I'm into industrial design and user design.
Use now
DBX Driverack PA2 - It has wizards, balanced measurement mic input, auto EQ, pad app remote control for walking around, active crossover, and it does something hard to find elsewhere - a subsonic synthesizer. Generally you would set it up for the show and then not need to do much adjustment.
They do have some more expensive models with >44KHz sampling. For PA use it has a limiter. This is a must when the DJ keeps turning up the mixer output gain to keep from blowing your speakers. It isn't the pure path we usually discuss. It is also used in studios for the subsonic synthesizer in mixing dance music.
Dolby A (363). All the Dolby stuff just works. The only thing you have to do is set the reference level. Most of what could fail was on field replaceable cards. People use the SR, the last evolution of A as a vocal compressor. If you know when to listen, Dolby does pump, but it was good for noise reduction. The company keeps innovating, profitably.
Revox linear turntable - there is a huge turntable design fetish in modern turntables. The lathe follows a linear path. If your turntable arm follows an arc, you will get a of distortion. The Revox controls are simple. The circuitry is complex, but it is repairable, unlike modern gear. Swiss engineering.
Harmon Kardon HK725 Preamp
Clean controls, tape to tape copy back when tape was a thing. Awaiting recap on the bench. The tuner has deteriorated in performance, have not researched why, and over the air tuners are not useful today. The HK825 also looks good, but the rotary switches are not good. On the bench.
Have owned
The Philips GA 312 turntable. Cheap. Good arm with simple anti skating adjust and a detachable cartridge caddy. The best part is the touch controls! I just gave it to a friend with a V15-Type IV along with my original EPI-100s for her garage sale about 15 years ago.
The Technics linear turntable arm in lid turntables. Foolproof. I never had to figure out how to set the tracking force though. They are not for a modern high end cartridge.
Have used
The 3M Mincom dual differential capstan tape machines. Technics had some similar consumer machines which were highly praised. very elegant solution that saved space. The capstan was ridged so that the tape was pulled through by the difference in diameter of the ridges. The pinch rollers on the in-feed and out-feed pressed the tape into different diameters on the upper capstan. The erase and record heads were on the left side, and the playback on the right. If you flipped down the magnetic shield, it was very easy to mark the tape for editing - if you were right handed. The shallow trough at the bottom where the old tape residue is was perfect for storing your editing razor blades. That was probably where the editing block was double side tape attached.
The Ampex ATR 100 series tape machines. The servo knob on the capstan was genius - very easy to edit on. Very satisfying when after the threading you do a maneuver to kick the servo in.
The Suburban Sound 8 channel mixer by Neil Muncy. Simple, portable, clean. The API console followed it and had a similar architecture - using transformer gain, and a relatively simple high gain op amp with bipolar output stage. Just 2 gain blocks from microphone in to line out. Today all those transformers and capacitors in the signal path are frowned upon from a sonic purity standpoint, but a lot of rock was based on transformer everything, and even inductor-based eq, including Neve. Doubt thais had capacitors in the signal path. The SS-3 was very lightweight and we took them remote often. Modern gear, and modern digital is much more linear, but if you did not over drive these they were good for the time.
There are a lot of beautiful looking / pleasing industrial design European microphones that sound good too. B&K, DPA, older AKG - the C24/C12, Schoeps. Industrial design on mics is getting a bit weird lately. Schoeps had a unique multi-pattern condenser capsule. By turning the top, you could have omni, figure 8, or cardioid. It had mechanical shutters and maybe selected diaphragms. I would have loved to take one apart, but there are probably very few people in the world who could put it back together. They discontinued it because it was too expensive to make and I think now they are out of the rubber parts of the mechanism.
Some of you may know the recording - tracking engineer Sylvia Massy. She is genius on pop vocals and drums. She collects and uses vintage microphones, has some beautiful ones, and uses them recording. You can find her studio site and YouTube videos.
Any speaker with a walnut horn is beautiful, but another material is probably better for performance.
Friend had
One of the Marantz oscilloscope receivers. XY displays of music are endlessly fascinating, but CRT's are a heavy maintenance and reliability lift. Personally I think this one has too many buttons and dials - better to use a larger CRT. By the way, some friends have repurposed CRT TVs with an audio amp connected directly to the deflection coils L-R to V-H. I have also seen people glue mirrors to speaker cones and bounce a laser off it.
Admire
Another poster had some Braun. I can't afford to collect those. I carry with me the design summary by Dieter Rams:
- Good design is innovative
- Good design makes a product useful
- Good design is aesthetic
- Good design makes a product understandable
- Good design is unobtrusive
- Good design is honest
- Good design is long-lasting
- Good design is thorough down to the last detail
- Good design is environmentally-friendly
- Good design is as little design as possible