A Moog Minimoog Voyager XL used to score Mad Max: Fury Road leads the line in the new shop of over 300 synths, samplers, pedals and instruments used throughout the famed composer’s career.
Reverb has become one of the largest online marketplaces for instruments and their latest partnership is with big-budget box office composer Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL. The Official Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL Reverb Shop will include a collection of analog gear dating back to his chart-topping career as Junkie XL and instruments that have been used in the compositions of recent blockbusters like Deadpool, Alita: Battle Angel and Batman v Superman.
A complete composer with experience in everything from mixing, mastering, and sound design to playing instruments and conducting an orchestra, Holkenborg’s thirty years of collecting gear led to him accumulate more equipment than he could possibly use.
“I’ve always been a bit of a gearhead,” he said. “Throughout my career I’ve amassed an amazing collection of instruments that I love and have cherished, but I simply can’t use them all anymore! I’ve made some amazing music with these items and they are instruments that deserve to be played, rather than used a couple of times a year. I want to get this gear in the hands of creators who can use it every day.”
The shop will feature more than 200 synthesizers, samplers, and other electronic instruments, nearly 100 pedals, dozens of microphones and guitars, drums, and more—including a Moog Minimoog Voyager XL that he used on some of his biggest scores.
Of the synthesizer, Holkenborg said: “The sound design possibilities in the low frequencies are amazing. It’s used in Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s used in Deadpool, Alita: Battle Angel, Mortal Engines – I can go on and on. It’s used everywhere. It’s a workhorse.”
Other gear highlights from the shop include a set of an Oberheim Stretch DX drum computer, Obeheim Promer EPROM creator, and an EPROM eraser that Holkenborg used to create his own samples. “This set was used a lot for Deadpool, where I sampled my own drum kit and cymbals and stuff,” said Holkenborg. “I created my own drum kit and with that, I was programming all the beats.”
There are also several CS series synths from Yamaha on offer, including a rare CS-70M, a CS-60 he used on Netflix’s Spectral, and a CS-40M he has employed often. “I’ve been using it for bass sounds primarily. Excessively used on the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League, very much used on Max Max, and everywhere where I needed that really growling sound.”
Yet another highlight is the rare Sequential Circuits Prophet-T8 that Holkenborg used on the surfing documentary Distance Between Dreams and Netflix’s White Lines.
“I remain a full contact composer, hands on will always be my approach,” said Holkenborg, who has created a new streamlined working set-up and studio with select drums, guitars, pianos, synths, and more. “My new set-up is certainly slimmed down, but I’ve found it to be quite liberating and inspiring, and I look forward to showing you what I’ve been up to very soon.”
The shop goes live on December 9 but Reverb is currently previewing the massive collection of gear on their website.