From pawn shop bargains to museum-grade rarities, Deadmau5’s studio is exactly what you’d expect from a self-confessed gear obsessive.

“This is my office, my lab, my retreat… I have a severe gear acquisition syndrome,” the producer says, as he opens the door to what is, by all accounts, a seriously stacked electronic music setup.

In a new Reverb tour, Deamau5 takes viewers inside a synth collection that spans vintage Roland classics, sprawling modular rigs, and rare one-off curiosities – each meticulously curated over years of obsession.

As Deadmau5 explains, turning this dream studio into a fully functional creative space wasn’t exactly easy: “I had a really good idea of what I wanted coming in,” he says. “This took like a solid three years just to get it to make sound.” And it shows. Every corner is packed with instruments that will make any synth nerd’s jaw drop.

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Among the first stops on the tour is a Roland Juno-106, “maybe the second synth I ever bought,” which Deadmau5 scored for just $40 from a pawn shop in Niagara Falls.

“I go in there, and I know exactly what the fuck that thing is,” says the producer. “He’s got it sitting sideways in a ‘fuck it’ bin. I say, ‘hey man, I’m looking for a MIDI controller’, and I pull it out and I’m like ‘what about this?’ He didn’t even know what the fuck it was. I said, ‘I just need the keys.’ And he’s like, ‘okay, 50 dollars.’ I was like, ‘eh… 40?’ He’s like, ‘yeah, whatever.’”

Beyond classic analogue staples like the ARP 2600 and Oberheim SEM modules, Deadmau5’s studio is also home to instruments that verge on museum territory. Take the Fairlight CMI30A, a historic sampling synthesizer complete with a still-functioning light pen, for example.

“This predates the invention of the [computer] mouse,” Deadmau5 notes. “I’ve used this on tracks. I use it on a track called 2448.”

Elsewhere, the EMS Synthi AKS – a compact modular synth – remains a firm favourite, with Deadmau5 joking he’d ‘definitely grab it in a fire’.

“It’s not dirty, but I use it a lot,” he says. “It’s the justification that, oh, I spent so much money on this fucking thing, I might as well use it, you know?”

The room also houses a gold-plated Minimoog Voyager 10th Anniversary edition, which Deadmau5 refers to as “the last unicorn.” One of only 31 ever made, the $15,000 synth is housed in a wooden box painted with high-gloss piano lacquer and accented with Japanese Awabi pearls.

“I never tour with anything I can’t replace,” Deadmau5 adds. It’s a rule he’s only broken once, when he brought the Voyager out for a one-off orchestral performance at The Wiltern Theatre in 2018.

Watch the full tour below.

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