Just turned on an old blowheater and the burning smell reminded me of the past.
Mostly now I use tiny modern gear, running on milliamps: m8, octatrack, op1f. But my old gear, from my twenties, it really smelled. Baking transformer. Hot solder. Cancerous PCB fumes. Gone from my life.
Given all that Proust stuff about smell and memory - and the toxic quest for authenticity through gear - I’m keen to know…
What’s your smelliest piece of equipment?
I think mine is an old paia modular.
Maybe it’s time for someone to make vintage gear smellovision.
Has to be either my used OB-6 or Moog One when I first got them. Original owners wore cologne or burned incense or something because those both had a very distinct “not from my house” smell when I first got them. OB-6 had to air out for a few weeks.
The Moog I’ve had over 4 years and I still get the occasional whiff of cologne from it when I leave it on long enough and get air flowing through the deepest recesses.
I have a guitar with “roasted” woods. Very pretty, very stable. When new it smelled like maple syrup. A decade on and it has lost the sweetness - smells kind of smoky.
My old DX7 II D. Bought used - third, fourth or who knows which hand. Likely survived several hundred weddings because the stench of tobacco residue was embedded into every fiber of its PCBs.
My first Digitakt smelled like an ash tray. There are few smells I hate more than stale cigarette residue. Returned it to the guy and bought a new one instead.
I once repaired my buddy’s decades-old Bass Balls pedal: on the outside, enough cat dander to stop up my throat, but on the inside, on the inside, the most vividly ancient stale weed smell.
The smelliest pieces of gear I’ve owned (I don’t own them anymore) were:
An OG Machinedrum bundled with a third-party power supply which, when turned on, smelled of (I can only describe as) ozone, kinda like that ‘oh shit it’s about to thunder and lightning’ smell. But really intense and deeply unsettling. I think it was my brain screaming TURN THAT THING OFF. Which I did. I’m confident it could have killed me had I left it on.
A Korg Volca Bass which absolutely stank of cigarettes. I wasn’t knowledgeable on what got smells out, so I was using several inefficient methods, including flushable toilet tissues. Somehow they made the smell much worse, like a dingy nicotine-streaked baby changing room.
Roland PG-300. The classic issue of stale cigarette smoke. I don’t think the seller even smoked. The damn PG-300 itself must’ve been a 3 pack a day smoker! Can’t explain that level of stench otherwise.
Awesome question.
Must be my old base,eng dwelling MPC 1000. got most of the Shell out by cleaning, vacuuming and putting a new car smell hanger in the hdd tray lol
But it still smells a bit of that wonderful time in the mid 00s
My 3-head Cassette Deck. It had this pungent chemically smell when I opened the packaging. It was pretty foul so I messaged the seller and he said he refurbished it at work where he makes fibre glass kayaks etc that use resins etc. He said it would soon fade and it did thankfully.
Sounds pretty cool actually!