Scope Labs Periscope
With its built‑in compressor set to ‘smash’, the Periscope earns its place in more sessions than you’d think.
Scope Labs’ Periscope looks like an eyeball lodged in a piece of Victorian plumbing, and comes in a replica treasure chest lined with shocking pink satin. If there was an SOS Award for Most Steampunk Studio Item, this would sweep the field. It also gets a special commendation for having the only spec sheet that’s ever made me laugh out loud.
The metal hemisphere at the business end actually houses not an eyeball but an ear, in the shape of a miniature omnidirectional electret microphone capsule. Within the Periscope’s copper‑coloured body, meanwhile, your 48V phantom supply doesn’t only feed the impedance converter. It also powers a built‑in analogue compressor, hard‑wired to nuke the signal into oblivion.