Every week in 2023, we've shared our weekly Most Watched roundup. Now, we're rounding up all the museum-quality models, unique and rare finds, and straight-up great deals that Reverbers have Watched the most this year.
Check out our cross-category The Most Watched Gear of the Year, and below, find the Top 20 pieces of recording gear (of any kind) and the Top 20 microphones of 2023. This follows our Most Watched guitars and Most Watched electronic gear lists, and we'll be publishing more lists all week, so come back soon.
Click any link below to visit the listing and learn more. Please note: All lists in this series exclude new gear from this year that Reverb helped market via launch campaigns.
This year, a stunning number of dream consoles have landed on Reverb and in our collective hearts, none more so than our No. 1 stunner: an all-tube Universal Audio board built for Las Vegas' Caesars Palace in the '60s, when the likes of Frank Sinatra and Diana Ross graced its stage.
But that console has many peers atop the Most Watch list, including:
- An 80-series Neve (No. 2) with vintage channel strips and a lot of modern amenities added recently.
- A module-less API desk (No. 3) from the '70s built to accept your preferred 500 series modules.
- RCA Hollywood's old Neve (No. 4), first built for Wally Heider's '70s LA studio and put to great use by producer Dennis Herring (Modest Mouse, Counting Crows) for decades after.
- A characterful '50s Magnasync tube mixer that got listed on Reverb via the great Studio Kerwax in Brittany, France.
Quite a few more vintage and modern Neves made the list: a heavily modified '70s console (No. 6), an almost-new Rupert Neve Designs 5088 (No. 8), 5422 suitcase mixer (No. 9), another '70s 80-series ready for future decades (No. 11), and, finally, a 16-channel AMS Neve Kelso (No. 18).
Beyond and in between that most historic name on the Top 20:
- A Calrec Minimixer (No. 7), originally for broadcast but repurposed for the recording studio.
- An Oram T Series console (No. 10), modeled after Tridents of old, that offers a more economical route into that vintage sound.
- A 1968 Langevin AM-4(No. 12) fully restored by the great Jonathan Masterson.
- A rebuilt Midas Pro-40 mixer (No. 13).
- A 24-channel Yamaha PM2000 console (No. 14) from the late '70s, as well as a pair of NS-10 monitors (No. 15).
- Two Trident boards, including a fixer-upper Series 65 desk (No. 16), and a ready-to-record T24 (No. 18).
- One lone SSL in the form of G-Series 6040 console from 1988 (No. 17).
- And, lastly, one of the final Acme Audio Motown DIs built with an NOS A-12J transformer (No. 20).
Just as Neve dominated the Most Watched list above, Neumann dominates the Top 20 of Most Watched microphones. A full nine of the 20 entrants are from the revered mic builders, including a pair of U 87s from Pink Floyd's Britannia Row studio claiming the No. 1 spot.
The others? An early, short-body U 47 (No. 2), a '56 U 47 (No. 5), a mint-condition U 67 listed for about $1,000 off its retail price (No. 6), a '60s M269 (No. 7), and four more vintage U 47s (at No. 10, No. 11, No. 14, and No. 19).
AKG is also well represented with several C414 variants: three EBs with brass CK12 capsules (at No. 4, No. 12, and No. 14) and one with the older nylon capsule at No. 9.
Rounding out the list are:
- A Universal Audio Volt mic (as part of well-priced B-stock Volt 276 bundle (No. 3)
- A Oktava MK-13M, which has been creatively modified (No. 13)
- An sE Electronics RNR1 ribbon (No. 15)
- A pair of Microtech Gefell PM 750s (No. 17)
- A modern-day Telefunken CU-29 (No. 18)
- And, finally, a Soyuz 023 Bomblet (No. 20)
Find more of the music gear we've all been dreaming about at The Most Watched Gear of the Year.