Inside Abbey Road Studios’ new collection of rare and vintage instruments: “We wanted not just the digital version of this gear, but the original”London’s Abbey Road Studios, the UMG-owned studio that’s home to countless iconic recordings, has vastly expanded its music gear collection. The studio aims to provide visiting artists with a much wider sonic palette and to inspire creativity in anyone making music there.
In an era where much of pro audio gear is digital, Abbey Road Studios is attempting to give musicians and producers access to more ‘real’ gear, some of which might not be familiar to even the most die-hard synth aficionados.

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Abbey Road’s Mark Robertson (Head of brand, marketing, and creative) and Jack Lintorn (Artist relations manager) were among those in charge of acquiring the new instruments and effects.
Speaking on the storied Abbey Road, Mark tells us: “Obviously, we have a lot of vintage gear that was designed and built here by the EMI engineers — vintage microphones and also a lot of old keyboards, from pianos to organs. People love exploring, and it’s a driver for them to come. But we’ve known for some time that there are other things that we would like to add to the collection to really enhance that offering.”
The long list of new gear spans the coveted and the classic. But stand out models include 16 synthesisers and seven vintage drum machines, including iconic synths such as a Roland Juno-106 from 1984, a Minimoog from 1974, Roland Jupiter synths, and drum machines including the Roland TR-707, 808, and 909. Oh, and a LinnDrum. Several pieces have been previously owned and used by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and Adrian Utley of Portishead.
Image: Rob Jones
When asked about the process of sourcing such unique gear, Jack says he “developed a list over about 18 months of the stuff we’d like to get. We had help from [vintage gear specialists] SoundGas; Tony at SoundGas helped us source the Minimoogs, the Jupiter-4s, the 808s — all these big pieces of kit, which we knew were fundamental to have in Abbey Road now. A lot of gear is retrofitted with Kenton MIDI.”
Crucial to the creation of the list, Jack says, was the community of resident producers and artists at Abbey Road. “I thought it would be great to make a real creative playground that artists could really just dive into and take into the studio. We worked with the artist community, speaking to the likes of Kid Harpoon, Two Inch Punch, and Jordan Rakei, to get their opinions. By the end of that process, there was a list of about 100 pieces of equipment, both vintage and future-facing.”
The new gear isn’t just stored in back rooms either; it’s out for people to use. As Jack explains, “In the Gatehouse studio, we’ve now got a six-tier synth rack, and we filled it with a treasure trove of synths. We’ve got drum machines on there as well, so you can go into that space now, and really just plug and play. Through speaking to artists, we found that it was something they were very keen on”.
Image: Rob Jones
In such a trove of gear, we wonder which instrument is the most obscure. “It’s a Japanese synth called the Suiko ST-50 Poetry Trainer,” reveals Jack. “They’re really rare — they’re called a poetry trainer because they were used in Japan to go along with poetry recitals. Someone could be a poet, and they would play this instrument alongside the recital. So it has amazing sound effects like the sound effects of a Koto and amazing old synth pads.”
Abbey Road has also been having a shakeup of the way its spaces are organised, as Mark explains. “We’ve got a space outside Studio 2 that used to have tape machines in it. We’ve cleared that, so a lot of the gear is now on display, and people can come and pick things up and hopefully feel inspired by things they might want to try and take into their session.”
“There’s also 40 guitar pedals”, chimes in Jack. “We’ve got the Chase Bliss, the Holograms, the Earthquaker Devices. Before a session, you can go and get your pedal board, pick the pedals you want, and take them away. There’s all the SOMA gear in there — we’ve got the Terra, the Lyra, Pulsar, and Super. We’ve never had these accessible before.”
Since its recent introduction, the newly expanded hardware collection has already proved a firm favourite at the studios, Mark promises. “People have been grabbing it, both artists and engineers. It’s been a bit crazy, but actually really rewarding and sort of validating.”
Image: Rob Jones
Jack adds, “It’s only been a few weeks we’ve had it all out — it’s lovely to see the engineers being so excited, especially in the corridor, they stop, and there’s an OmniChord that they start playing. It’s stuff which we haven’t had access to before, so it’s really exciting. And the Moogs and the Junos have already been used in sessions. The pedal boards have been really useful as well.”
Mark concludes by stressing the idea behind the endeavour. “We wanted not just the digital version of [this gear], but the original. It was important to us to find things that had some pedigree.”
Abbey Road’s purchase of all this gear is the single largest investment it has ever made in new creative tools. Is the company looking for a big return on its investment, or to just turn the place into a museum of synth relics?
“We’re thinking about Abbey Road’s place in wider popular culture and how we make it more accessible to artists: ‘How do we build perhaps the truest home for music making, a place where people can come and create?’”
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