Aphex Twin's extensive career is marked by an equally vast collection of synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines, many of which have been integral to shaping his pioneering electronic sound.
Rather than providing an exhaustive list of every piece of gear he’s ever used, this piece highlights some of the more unique and under appreciated machines in his arsenal—some of which you may have never even heard of. It’s worth noting that Aphex Twin is known for modifying, circuit-bending, and repurposing gear in ways that often go far beyond the manufacturer’s original intentions. Many of the synths and samplers featured here may have been altered or used in unconventional ways, so don’t expect to be able to become Aphex Twin by purchasing one of these machines.
Cheetah MS800
The Cheetah MS800, a digital wave synthesizer designed by Mike Lynch for Cheetah in 1989, was an affordable but notoriously difficult synth to program. Its clunky interface, requiring navigation via a two-digit display and ten push buttons, made even basic functions frustrating which led to it selling poorly.
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It is an interesting beast, allowing for 15 voice polyphony either to be used on a single synth sound or spread across different midi channels that can be played concurrently. Despite the small form factor and clunky interface it can be a relatively powerful synth engine once you get over the large hurdle of programming it.
In 2016 when Aphex Twin referenced it in his Cheetah EP, using the synth to produce the EP and also take notes from the visual style of the brand for the artwork. The unique gritty sound is on full display on this EP. One weird feature of this synth is that there is no filtering present, instead you have to use the blend between the waveforms to add or remove top end content, a very bizarre design choice, but at least that’s one less thing to try to program with the interface!
Casio FZ-20M
This hardware digital sampler released in the late 80s has been used on several Aphex Twin tracks and is even featured in a song title (abundance10edit [2 R8’s, FZ20m & a 909]) from the 2018 EP “Collapse”. The FZ-20M is an upgraded rack mountable version of the popular Casio FZ-1 which boasts a maximum sample rate of 36 kHz (!!!) which was actually considered high quality at the time.
The Casio FZ-20M stood out among late-80s samplers for its advanced waveform editing and surprisingly deep synthesis capabilities. Unlike many samplers of its time, it featured an additive synthesis mode, allowing users to create or modify waveforms at a harmonic level, making it more than just a playback machine. Its digital filters, while limited compared to analog counterparts, provided a distinctive coloration that could be pushed into gritty, resonant territory. Aphex Twin likely took advantage of these features, using the FZ-20M not just for straightforward sampling but as a creative sound-shaping tool, bending samples and utilising the synth engines for warped, otherworldly textures as heard on abundance10edit.
With its 2MB of ram, the max sampling time at 36kHz is 30 seconds, which means you have to get creative to fit a track’s worth of audio into memory. On the aforementioned track it sounds like the sampler was used for vocal sample processing, synth pads and potentially even the lead synth sounds as the other two machines are strictly drum machines. Using this machine gave these sounds a unique texture likely due to the FZ-20M’s gritty digital aliasing artifacts.
Yamaha RS7000
The RS7000 is groovebox from the early 2000s which contains a powerful sequencer, sampler and synth engine with 16 tracks in a reasonably compact form factor for the time. The unit features a built in sampler, multiple send and master effects and the kind of depth that even some modern day hardware grooveboxes lack.
This all in one machine has a solid sequencer, usable sounds, great sampling capabilities, and extensive real-time control options, making it a functional workstation for music creation. Aphex Twin was fond of the RS7000 and used it throughout the 2000’s. In a full circle kind of moment, Yamaha actually used some drums sampled from his track Isopropophlex in the stock drum samples on the machine.
Here’s a couple quotes from Aphex Twin talking about how much he likes the RS7000 (mind the bad spelling, these are comments and snippets from interviews typed out!):
“oh , u gotta check it, the midi feedback, you can do stuff like press one key and get a whole load of cascading notes ascending or descending and u can even have the repeitions increase or decrease, lilke bouncing ball or inverse, sounds a bit like a pitchshifter, top 4 a bloody rs7000”
“rs7000’s are dope btw yamaha please release the source code for that ffs you bastards!”
Korg MS-50
You see a lot of people using and praising the MS-20, and in recent years using the MS-20 reissue, but this Korg MS-50 is like the forgotten sibling, with more patchability and is fully modular unlike its smaller family member. Despite only having one oscillator, this beast can produce a large range of sound timbres due to the many patching possibilities and pulse width modulation.
Originally dubbed as an expander module to pair with the MS-10 or MS-20, the MS-50 can be used independently but is more suited to sound processing than tone generation due to the single oscillator. Aphex Twin supposedly had 3 MS-20’s which was one of the only synths that he didn’t chop up into some other machine and presumably paired well with his MS-50.
Spotted in an early photo of Aphex Twin and often confused as being an MS-20, this flexible modular beast was used on some of his early tracks from the SAW 85-92 era and beyond.
Tape Player
Yep, this is a weird one but stick with me. Some of the grit on Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is actually attributed to the tapes they were recorded on. The tracks on the final release were played over and over again by Aphex and his friends, adding tape wear over time. When it came time to finally release the compilation, the tapes were the only surviving recordings and subsequently got released as is, tape wear and all.
Overall, sometimes the curse of degradation can actually help in creating texture and vibe. Like sampling a dusty scratched up record gives a sample some unique texture, playing the track over and over again on tape seems to be a key ingredient in what made this album sound so full, in a weird backwards way that most audio engineers would scoff at and try to edit out in the digital realm nowadays.
Aphex Twin’s approach to gear is as unconventional as his music, proving that technical limitations and obscure instruments can be a source of creative inspiration rather than a hindrance. Whether it’s pushing a Yamaha RS7000’s sequencer to its limits, wrestling with the cryptic interface of the Cheetah MS800, or extracting raw textures from the Casio FZ-20M, he has consistently found ways to make each machine uniquely his own.
Beyond the specs and features, these instruments serve as a reminder that the artist’s ingenuity is often more important than the gear itself. While many producers chase the latest technology, Aphex Twin’s work demonstrates that even the most obscure or outdated machines can become powerful tools for sonic exploration in the right hands.
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