Studer A80 (modified)

Peter Gabriel had at his disposal a Studer A80 2-inch 24-track tape machine.

This particular Studer was customised by Colin Broad of CB Electronics, who modified the A80 to have DC audio cards and its own transport controls. Peter received this machine in 1982 partway through recording Security.

When it came to recording So, this Studer was joined with a stock A80. The modified Studer (referred to as the "B" machine at this point) was for recording Peter's demo tracks & rough sketches done with the Prophet-5, Fairlight and the Linn, while the other A80 (the "A" machine) was for recording other musicians' parts while listening to the parts playing back on the "B" machine. However, synchronisation problems arose between the two machines due to different audio cards (the stock A80 had FM audio cards), and the Adams-Smith synchroniser was sending the wrong signals to this machine. This meant the two machines were drifting apart from each other. This problem would be solved upon hiring a Mitsubishi digital 32-track machine; parts from slave reels can be hand-synchronised when copying parts from various slave reels onto the digital master.