99% of Aphex Twin’s sound comes from his compositional, sound engineering, musical, timbral, production, and arranging genius.

For the 1% that comes from his equipment, here is how its done:

The following photos were taken from an early 1990s set during his Analog Bubblebath, Digireedoo, Classics, and Selected Ambient Works II era. I saw this tour in 1994 in San Francisco where he used this or a similar setup and can confirm that he played his music live, and used sequences of samples coupled with manual play and sequences of synthesizers. It was the best concert I’ve ever seen.

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The Korg MS20 is a general all purpose peformance analog synthesizer with some patching capabilities.

The Sequential Circuits Studio 440 is a 12 bit sampler and sequencer that has an analog filter and a SCSI port. This was the main driver behind Aphex Twin’s performances. He created sample libraries of his unique sounds, sequenced them into a song, played it live, and added additional sounds and mixing. These were made in Silicon Valley by Dave Smith who today makes the Evolver analog keyboards. The Studio 440 is considered the warmest sounding sampler of all time and is highly sought after.

Here is another photo of him playing- not sure if its a live set or a studio session.

The synthesizer in the upper right hand corner of the picture is an EMS synth made in England. It appears to be a VC3 but could be a SynthI.

The synth in the lower left is a mysterybox that appears in his other live set photos. Does anyone have any idea what this is? Or what the drumpad device in the center is?

Entering the current era, we see a photo of equipment on the Analord 09 LP. It is an EML Electrocomp 400 Sequencer. I would bet that he has at least one of these in his studio.

Here Aphex Twin is doing some DJ work and live sequencing with a JL Cooper CS-32 MIDI control surface connected to a Sony Vaio Windows based laptop.

And here is a home made mysterybox. Could it be a chain of 555 timers? An analog circuit resurrected from an old TAB book? A recycled 6851, 8580, or CEM chip?

These days he has been seen with a Sony Vaio laptop, a MIDI mixer, an analog mixer, and a sampler. Carrying those fragile analog and home made devices around is frustrating especially when an old rare one breaks. He samples them and brings the data on the road.

Please send your comments and photos to help honor this great musician by understanding his creative process.