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lordgalvar wrote:I like the Ibanez hd1500.

Don't know if it's underrated but the vermona ring mod is great.

Agreed on boss half racks. Sampler and Pitch are awesome.

Monomachine can rack mount!

I'd stay away from the old Roland samplers unless you really want to buy a lot of accessories.

ADAT

Ensoniq Mirage (it's a classic though)

Bode Frequency Shifter!

Aren't the rack versions of the mirage rare as hell though? Really underrated though I agree, to me it's THE lo-fi sampler sound. Other ensoniq stuff may be worth checking out though as they use a pretty cool wave-table synthesis in some synths that are more common in rack

Rack gear opened a rabbit hole of sorts for me in terms of gear collecting, so take everything I say on the subject with a grain of salt (and run in the opposite direction if you have limited space or sensitive loved ones).

I'd keep an eye on your local craigslist for general electronics rack stuff, I came across an old PA system with a modular mixer (IRL Voicematic) and a cool graphic EQ that has kill switches for each band (Rauland 6326).

Some of my most prized finds are shit that wasn't intended for audio in the first place. Ballantine 320 tubed voltmeter (has massively ridiculous gain settings that are probably useless for anything outside of noise/industrial stuff), Ball Brothers (the same Ball that brought us canning jars) Mark VI Special Effects Generator (for video stuff, has a delightfully big sound to it), etc.. most of these were bought on a lark because I thought it looked cool and if it sounded like shit I could just retrofit something else inside the enclosure. The dud pile is larger, of course..

I guess where I'm going with this is that sometimes the best stuff doesn't have an established reputation or large production numbers, so following your gut may pay off.

Back in the realm of music, Kawai rack gear seems under appreciated. It hasn't got the tallest headroom, but the supporting pieces (line mixer, EQ, etc.) don't seem to command a lofty price.

All the Kawai stuff is great. Some of the lesser known akai too (like the trigger to midi thing mt-32 I think?)

And Crochambeau has lead me to some neat rack gear.

Mirage: I used to see them all the time. maybe they are rarer now? Nobody wanted 'em haha. My hip-hop producer friend talked me out of buying his way back when and I kind of regret it (I think the modern floppy replacements is helping with these thing). I was fighting a Roland s-330 at the time. Then lost interest in sampling for a long time. It's still the coolest sampler to me. Akai S900 is a classic too.

I had a Marlboro rack for a while that I sold to Ryansummit. It was kind of fun.

There was an mpc rack filter for a while. Electrix was another one that kind of always looked like those alesis tabletop effects.

Trigger to MIDI is one of my interests. You mentioned S900 - very cool device, though not budget friendly any more; the ASK-90 option does trigger to MIDI too. I recently fitted mine with a Gotek so as to abandon the nightmare of obsolete storage media.

Also on the trigger/information to MIDI front, there's also the IVL 7000 Pitchrider, which is set up for a hex pup but can accept an audio signal across certain pins of the 8 pin DIN connector. I'm not sure if you can output a different channel per input, but I would expect you can since that was a guitar synth standard mode of operation.

Roland VP-70 also does pitch to MIDI, though only a single channels worth.

Old ass digital delays with analog control sets, highly recommended no one passes up such a beast if it sports a name unfamiliar, so long as it's cheap and operational anyway. Example: Audio Digital (that's the name of the company, feel free to google it hahaha) TC2, cool old digital delay that will allow external signal to control the stage labelled VCO (I have no idea if this is technically a VCO or not) which determines repeat rate - so you can swing your repeat pitch up and down based on what you're piping into the VCO jack.

Drum triggers are a weird thing. I've been trying to find the voltages those expect (like for the ddrum ddti/alesis) but it seems kinda random? They talk about crosstalk when using 5v squarewave but then talk about throwing 30vpp into the input just fine?

The Akai one works with typical modular triggers from what I hear. The ddrum half rack does too but it requires lots of tweaking of the settings.

But, to be be able to use a comparator off your guitar or several different envelopes to trigger different sounds at different dyanimc levels seems like setting I'm going to try to pursue.

That would open up a realm of rack drum machines without having a cool future drum set or pad (not because of the midi conversion but adapting to the expected voltages for drum triggers with CV out on things like moogerfoogers).

for utility pieces like parametric EQ and compression Rane rackmounts are functional and cheap...i have a stereo compressor and a 5-stage parametric that IIRC cost less than $50 each.

For Rane stuff, if it isn’t internal power supply in the unit, do not buy it without the proprietary external supply. There are no aftermarket replacements last I checked. Used market will gouge you well over $50 for the supply.

But I love Rane. Great stuff, and you can still get all the documentation and schematics direct from Rane on their site.