Having spent the last few decades amassing a huge collection of studio gear, Chicago house legend Derrick Carter has now decided that it’s time to trim it back. On 30 September, he’ll open his own shop on Reverb, and it’ll be fit to bursting with more than 100 music technology classics.
On taking the decision to “de-bulk” his collection, Carter says: "I'm not a mad scientist anymore. I have a process now, and having to bring the voltage up on this gear days before I start making music is a lot. My electric bill is upset with me.
“I hope it does find good homes and people are able to glean what they need out of it, just like I was able to glean what I needed out of it. I hope it sparks that mad scientist feeling in someone else."
A self-confessed completist in the past, Carter’s collection contains some true classics, such as a TR-909 that was also used by Detroit techno wizard Jeff Mills and - conversely - a TB-303 that’s as good as new.
"Acid machine. Original, in the box, with the bag, all the charts, and manual,” Carter says of his Roland Bass Line synth. “You won't find one as pristine as this in any place, shape, or form unless you somehow manage to get a time machine.”
Other highlights included a modded TR-808, two Akai MPC3000s, a Moog Minimoog Voyager Signature Edition, a Yamaha DX7IIFD ("For a lot of people they were notoriously hard to program, but it was something that I could do, so I did it," Carter says) a rare Ensoniq Fizmo Transwave digital synth and a Technics SX-WSA1R synth.
"There's a lot of rare shit in my room," Carter says, but he’s decided that now’s the time to move on from some of it.
"I want my life to be less cluttered, less incidental, less interstitial, just more intuitive to who I am now," he says. "Think of me as a monk or a nun - I'm going to let go of all this stuff before I go on my journey of a thousand miles."
To sign up to be alerted when the Derrick Carter Reverb Shop goes live, head on over to the Reverb website.
