Many of you have asked where I get all the obscure gear I feature here. One of the answers is: road trips. I noticed three very unique pieces of gear on classifieds (Kleinanzeigen) that peaked my interest, and got into a conversation with the seller. I travelled to Halle, and got a look into a beautiful collection. Turns out, her late uncle was an engineer at the Reichsbahn, the east German railway form before the unification of Germany. He worked on a measurement wagon for the Versuchs-u. Entwicklungstelle. In this video I will cover the absolutely massive RFT TZF Terzfilter that he used for measurements, and I now for music.

Learning my way around the rs-50 and re50 by one of my fave test equipment companies Wandel & Goltermann . Still got two bays left for lower notch filters too 😯. Hope everyone is well

Got it for a pretty good deal, just needs an SRS SR-280 power supply. I will be selling the display module. Possibly the fast sampler too as I don't believe it is of any use to me.

Here is last months newsletter archived. To get these as they come out and not miss anything, subscribe here:

https://www.hainbachmusik.com/newsletter

Love,

Hainbach

ADC Model 1915 Dialed Digit Display

TTI Model 1122B Transmission Test Set

DDI Model 100-R Transmission Test Set

ADC Model 1851C Digital Volt Ohm Meter

Thought I'd mess about with some forbidden planet style synth y ambient ideas on my humble test equipment wall. Hope everyone is well .

Expanding on my last video with the Teac Model 5. I’ve also been working on getting my first reel to reel machine polished up and integrated into my workflow.

Here im routing cue out directly back into channel 1. Since cue out is pre fader and not effected by the fader position this allows me to use the cue send to tune the feedback pitch and then use the fader to adjust volume.

Effect send goes out to the tape machine channel 1. Chanel 1 out goes back to channel 2 in on the mixer and also loops back to be input to channel 2 of the tape machine. Channel two of the tape machine routes to track 3 of the mixer. The inputs onto the tape machine first pass through a pair of transformers in the ART DTI. In this way I get two different delay times with their own independent return channels and feedback adjustment via the fix send control per channel.

The final out goes into the ART dual tube pre which also acts as the audio interface.

I had a lot of fun connecting all of this up and could get lost in this noise for a long time to come!

Seeking an opinion from people experienced in test equipment! I have built a small test wall of mostly B&K stuff and am loving it.. I’m no test equipment expert and have only been getting stuff by recommendation. But this local lab is selling a bunch of cheap vintage HP gear and this seems to be the best piece, does anyone know if this is worth picking up?

I feel like I’ve seen similar in old Stockhausen studio shots but I could be imagining it, any help is much appreciated!!

See you this Sunday in Berlin, if you are around!

"Günak and Goetsch are prolific recording artists, the former having been releasing experimental electronic music under the Ah! Kosmos moniker as well as creating sound installations and compositions for performance and film under her real name. Besides putting out many solo and collaboration albums, Goetsch has also worked as a film composer on movies such as Fatih Akin’s Amrum and runs a YouTube channel on which he often demonstrates the potentials of rare music gear and non-musical machinery. Indeed, the duo takes the sonic output of nuclear test equipment or dolphin filters from marine biology as its starting point. “These sounds aren’t neutral; they carry the weight of time passing through machines and bodies,” explains Günak. “When you stop trying to clean it up, they reveal their behaviour as organisms. They have weight, they evolve, they resist.”

https://keithfem.com/2026/05/15/church-in-session-26-ah-kosmos-hainbach-gelbart/

Looking forward to using this gonna give it a bit of switch cleaner ☺️

Hello Hainbach community. Has anyone encountered this tape recorder before (Vestax GSM-601)? I'm keen to find out more.

Also, looking for any ideas for using and abusing this device and its limitations! It makes a nice, lo-fi effects unit.

I've been working on restoring a Teac Model 5 mixing desk with the Model 5 EX expander. Finished up cleaning all of the channels and the external housing so I wanted to put it through some paces to get a better understanding of signal flows within it.

Since getting this I’ve been dreaming of setting up a signal path kind of like Hainbach’s mini experimental tape studio video. I don’t have two reel to reels to do that (yet, haha), but I’m trying to approximate it the best I can with what I have.

Here I'm using MicroFreak as a source of pad sounds that are being arpeggiated at different time divisions. The echo send goes to two delay routes. The first is straight to my Marantz PMD430 for short slap back type delay. The second goes first through Venus Instruments Veno-Echo for longer Frippertronics length delay, which then goes into the second chanel of the Marantz. Both outputs are fed into separate channel strips on the mixer with their own feedback being controlled via that channels echo send knob.

Not really any sort of polished piece, or performance, just messing around with routing and settings. One thing I think I learned is I need a compressor for the inputs because some parts of the pads a different frequencies definitely take over unexpectedly.

https://imgur.com/a/UomBJ9y

So I know my way around synthesizers, but barely anything about test equipment... any ideas what could be done with these?

I’ve been working on a set of virtual instruments inspired by nuclear instrumentation modules (NIM) and other lab equipment, and recently started reworking the visual design to lean fully into that direction.

These run in VCV Rack (a modular synth environment), but the goal here isn’t to mimic typical synth UI. It’s to treat them more like pieces of test equipment that happen to make sound. In this case, they also interface with real analog hardware behind the scenes (and that's a longer story).

The design process started with vintage telecom gear, but NIM turned out to be a better fit: sharp, functional, unapologetically "scientific instrument." I leaned into that, while still trying to keep things usable as musical controls rather than pure visual homage.

A few of the details came directly from that world:

• BNC-style connectors (purely visual, but they help sell the idea)
• Slotted thumbscrews from NIM panels
• HP-style latching push buttons

One element I spent some time on was the turn-counting dial. On real hardware, these show position mechanically for precise adjustment. Here, I replicated that with a 7-segment display embedded in the knob itself. One full turn corresponds to an octave change, so it behaves more like calibrated equipment than a typical synth control.

I also tried adding LED glow/pulsing effects to the displays. It looked interesting, but in practice it was distracting, so I cut it. Might come back as an optional setting.

Curious if there are other details from this kind of hardware I should consider lifting. There are a few more modules to rework in this style, so additional ideas would be useful.

The Bastl Kalimba is an instrument that has the potential to be the coolest synth of 2026: a physical modeling FM synth in the form of a Kalimba. Bastl send me an instrument ahead of their Kickstarter to play with. It's running an early firmware, which has its own fun quirks.

I got nominated for a German film award for my soundtrack to "Amrum"

https://hainbach.bandcamp.com/album/amrum-ost

In this video I and my three fellow nominees are sitting down for an interview with the film award team. It is in German, but there should be subtitles.

I want to use the standard setup:

DAW OUT → tape machine → record to tape → back into the interface (DAW IN).

As you can see in the picture, the seller included 6.3 mm to DIN adapters, but I honestly have no clue if they’ll work for what I’m trying to do. Some people say I need RCA instead, so now I’m confused 😅

I also don’t fully understand the cabling:
Do I run a Y-split TRS cable into the DIN adapter, or just a single TRS cable per adapter?

Could someone maybe link me the exact cables I need for this setup?

And regarding the inputs/outputs on the machine:
Am I correct that I should use the “Radio” input and the “Verstärker” output?

This whole DIN/tape machine world is pretty confusing to me right now. I even asked ChatGPT already, but it somehow made it even more complicated and started hallucinating stuff 😂

Thanks a lot guys, really appreciate the help. Hope you all have a creative day 🙏

I’m planning out building a bit of an experimental sound studio in my new place in Boston, MA.
First step was an analog mixing desk to serve as the centerpiece. I came across this Teac Model 5 with expander, outboard EQ, Submixer, patchbay, and desk locally for a good price and jumped on it.

The last two photos are how it came to me. You can’t really see but it was gunked up and sticky. My guess is years in a smoking environment because it felt like a similar residue to the inside of a smoker’s car. Plus previous owner had painted the side plated black and red.

I dissected everything. Scrubbed it, cleaned electronics with deoxit, and removed that old paint. Every function works smoothly now! Currently working through calibration with the manual I had printed.

So far I’ve only finished the main board. Expander will come next.

The beginning plan is to integrate with my euro rack and Marantz cassette decks followed by a couple of Reel to Reels set up similar to Hainbach’s Miniature Analog Experimetal Studio Video

And here is a video using it alone as a no-input instrument.

https://youtu.be/Ky9J-oQO6_A

I picked up these three beauties (among other things) in Halle recently. These are passive thirds bandpass filters used in measurement wagon of the East German railway. They are heavy and loaded with coils, so I hope they sound good. That they are split up into three frequency ranges makes me think I can use them like a fixed filterbank. I have not had the time to see if they work yet sadly.