If you’re a gearhead and an unconventional music lover, chances are you’ve come across Andrew Huang while poking around YouTube. Andrew’s channel is a cornucopia of creative musical content, showcasing his penchant for finding weird gear, writing weird songs, and making all kinds of weird music.
Here at Reverb, we’re big fans of Andrew and are stoked to present the four-episode series we collaborated with him on called Weird Gear. In the series, Andrew finds a crazy unique instrument on Reverb and uses to create a song. Check out the videos below to see him in action with a variety of oddball instruments.
In the first episode above, Andrew snags a vintage ‘60s drum machine called the Maestro Rhythm King.
For his song, Andrew thickens the tone of the Rhythm King by running the machine through Ableton Live's amp emulator for added character and depth. If you like the finished track, you can click here to download Andrew's original song now.
For episode two, Andrew is back with a modular synth made by Folktek called the Mescaline. Designed by Arius Blaze, the Mescaline is an experimental synth made up of three panels—the Channel, Motion, and Mental—that can be connected to use as a standalone unit or installed into your Eurorack (individually or collectively).
The Channel panel features a touch-sensitive face with each hexagon representing a musical note that can be tuned manually or controlled via the master pitch control. Channel also functions as an effects unit, featuring effects like reverb, tight delay, pitch-shift delay, and reverse. The Motion panel is an odd sequencer, seemingly designed to limit your ability to build a consistent rhythm when using it as a standalone unit.
Lastly, the top panel is called Mental, and though Andrew has read the user manual front to back, there's no information whatsoever about what any of the controls actually do. But despite limited info, Andrew was still able to put together a rad original song with the Mescaline at its center. Download it here.
The Stereo Field is an instrument with three main uses: processing external sounds, generating its own sounds, or using the sounds it generates to control any instrument that accepts control voltage.
On its face, you’ll find a touch-sensitive top plate, eight 3.5mm patch points, and four knobs, including two stereo volume knobs that affect distortion, drive amounts, internal feedback pitch, and modulation rates. As Andrew proclaims, “Noise artists: here’s your entire career.”
Watch Andrew also demonstrate some conventional uses for the Landscape Stereo Field: running it through some effects in his modular setups, running his guitar through it, and—arguably the coolest application for the noise box—running it through Moog synthesizers. If you dig what you hear in the video above, click here to download Andrew's tracks from the video for free right here on Reverb.
For his last episode, Andrew checks out a kalimba with a few special twists. The Hokema Sansula is tuned differently than a regular kalimba, featuring almost all of the notes from the A minor (minus the fourth and the seventh) and weirdly features two high A-notes so close together than they'd have to be played by the same hand.
Also unique to this kalimba is that it's affixed to a drum head, which lets you adjust how the instrument resonates based on close or far you hold it to a surface.
If you're interested in snagging a Hokema Sansula of your own, you can find one right here on Reverb. And if you enjoyed Andrew's original music from the video, you can click here to download the tracks for free.