It would be safe to say that the legendary Fairlight CMI sampler is one of the most important electronic instruments ever created.

Designed in 1979, the digital sampling synthesizer would come to define pop music, even though its charms were out of reach for most musicians. In 1985, a brand new CMI III cost an absolutely massive $65,000, but that didn’t stop Peter Gabriel, Tears for Fears, Kate Bush, Thomas Dolby, Hans Zimmer and Pet Shop Boys from grabbing one and using it on some of their best known tracks.

Kate Bush’s incredible Hounds of Love album that made no.5 on FACT’s list of the 100 Best Albums of the 1980s would never have sounded the way it did without the CMI III, and its particular fingerprint has been sought after ever since.

Now we all have the chance to own one of these rare machines, as Horizontal Productions in Australia is selling Yello producer Boris Blank’s fully-reconditioned model – signed by Blank himself and containing multiple banks of his sounds, no less. The Fairlight has also been bundled with libraries of sounds collected over the years from the Pet 
Shop Boys, Trevor Horn, Hans Zimmer, Frankie goes to Hollywood, Art of Noise and more, so if you’re thinking of making 80s electronic pop music the right way and have almost eight-thousand quid to spare, you know what you have to do.

Take a look at the Ebay listing (which contains a number of pictures) here.