Mike Dean Buys Rare PPG Wave, Demos It In Studio

Mike Dean walked viewers through a newly acquired PPG Wave 2.3 inside his studio in a feature and demo video Reverb published on February 24, 2026. The Reverb video, also shared to Reverb’s YouTube channel under a clip titled “Mike Dean Bought a Crazy Rare Synth & It Sounds Incredible - YouTube,” shows Dean playing patches and discussing why he finally added the early 1980s hybrid synth to his setup.

Dean’s profile as a producer and multi-instrumentalist frames the buy: MusicRadar lists collaborators that include The Weeknd, Beyoncé, Kanye West, Drake, Madonna and Jay-Z, underscoring why gear choices in his studio draw attention. The PPG Wave 2.3 stands out in Dean’s rig because it is one of the few digital synths amid a mostly analogue collection; MusicRadar calls him an analogue aficionado and notes the Wave is “one of the few digital synths in his extensive collection.”

The purchase story is plain and specific in the video. Dean admitted he was initially uninterested: “I've always never been interested in it because it's a digital synthesizer, you know, with analogue filters.” After friends urged him that “you should definitely have one of these in your arsenal,” Dean said he hunted listings online: “so I started searching for one, started looking on Reverb and tried to find the cleanest-looking one.” He later called it the “best piece of gear” he's ever bought on Reverb.

Sound and circuitry drove the conversion. MusicRadar and Yahoo reproduce the technical take: “The Wave may be digital, but its a digital synth from the early '80s, not a sterile modern soft-synth: its low-resolution wavetables produce stepped waveforms and aliasing that create a distinctive and artefact-rich sound when run through its 12-bit DACs and analogue filters.” In the studio demo Dean emphasized that point, asking aloud, “It doesn't sound digital, right?” and celebrating the artifacts: “All the messed up shit is what makes it cool, you know? I'm so glad I got it, because it's a very cool synth. It's one of my favourites now.”

The Reverb feature captures Dean auditioning some of his own patches and exploring the Wave’s bright-but-gritty character. MusicRadar situates the instrument culturally, noting that “Everybody in the '80s had one of these. If you were a successful band that could afford it, you had a PPG Wave,” which helps explain both the Wave’s historic cachet and why dealers and collectors call surviving units “crazy rare.”

For collectors and players watching the Reverb video from February 24, 2026, the headline takeaway is clear: a producer known for analogue rigs embraced the PPG Wave 2.3 for its idiosyncratic 12-bit tone, calling the machine a favorite and a standout purchase from Reverb.