An Antwerp workshop, 1954.

Rodec is a Belgian name, and the company dates its story to 1954. The Rodec website says that is when its founder, Roger Declercq, began building radios, amplifiers and loudspeakers “to measure.” The history page of Transtel Sabima, the Antwerp company that made Rodec equipment for decades, spells him “ROger DEClerck,” with capitals that point to where the name came from; the two sources differ, so we give both spellings. Transtel Sabima says he first built equipment for himself and his friends, then opened his first shop in Antwerp.

The early work was made to order. An archived Rodec about page from 2001 lists valve preamplifiers and power amplifiers, tuners and custom home systems, then control units for AMI jukeboxes, mono bar amplifiers and single-fader turntable units, built to be “resistant to heat, beer and plain abuse.” Transtel Sabima adds mobile units such as the P418.

When the mixers began is less precise. The company now says that in 1970 “the first mixer with faders is born, as an original invention by Rodec”; that is its own claim. Transtel Sabima is more cautious: because early production archives do not exist, it says, the first Rodec mixers “appear around 1970,” naming the CU881, CU882 and CU888, with talk-over, gain on every channel and tone controls following.

Transtel Sabima itself was founded in the early 1970s, it says, “born directly from the production of” Rodec, and from 1977 it also distributed Denon, later adding Monitor Audio and Spendor. It says Rodec grew from three people to a production facility of about 20.

From the MX18 to the MX180.

The model that made the name travel was a mixer with tone controls on every channel. The 2001 about page claims Rodec was the first to put three-band tone controls on input channels, and lists its models with launch months: the Dynamix in May 1980, the MX7 in July 1986, the MX18 in September 1986, the MX180 in May 1990, the MX180 MkII and the MX240 in May 1997 and the MX180 MkIII in April 1999. Transtel Sabima says the MX18, with three-band equalisation per channel, was “copied all over the world” — again its own description. The current Rodec website dates the MX180 to 1990, matching the old list.

The MX180 became the house’s signature, and it was built in small numbers. Rodec says production ran to “just a few thousand pieces per year” and that it “always remains an artisan maker business.” The 2001 page described the firm as family-owned, with everything “designed and manufactured by Transtel Sabima Ltd., Antwerpen.” Later ranges took in amplifiers, products for bars and restaurants, vinyl accessories, scratch and semi-digital mixers “and even filter banks,” Transtel Sabima says.

Then the business shrank. Transtel Sabima says production was reorganised after 2008 and that, as components became scarce, “in 2014 it has been decided to discontinue production.” Spare parts and service for the old mixers go through Transtel Sabima, the 2022 Rodec website said. Transtel Sabima says it is still managed by the family of its founders, and that on 1 February 2023 its distribution business moved to a new company, Transtel BV.

Design and documentation.

Two groups dominate DJ equipment. Pioneer DJ left Pioneer Corporation in 2014; its parent, AlphaTheta, has been owned since 2020 by the Japanese holding company Noritsu, according to English Wikipedia. inMusic Brands, of Cumberland, Rhode Island, owns Numark, Denon DJ and Rane, which it bought in 2016.

The makers here work around that pair. Reloop is a brand of Global Distribution GmbH & Co. KG of Münster, Germany, its imprint says. Ecler was founded in Barcelona in 1965 and, by its own account, was acquired by the Fordahl Capital group in 2014; it labels its products “Made in Barcelona.” Mixars calls itself an independent subsidiary of Italy’s RCF Group, run from Valsamoggia, near Bologna.

Two are older names that stopped. Rodec, of Belgium, says its production paused in 2014 and that it returned in 2022 under Tom De Ridder, its chief executive since 2021; its website names TDR Media BV of Leuven. Vestax, the Tokyo company founded by Hidesato Shiino in 1977, entered bankruptcy proceedings in December 2014, Teikoku Databank reported.

One has joined a giant. Stanton, the American phono-cartridge name built up by Walter Stanton, passed to Gibson in 2011 and to inMusic in 2020, according to English Wikipedia; its website now calls it part of “the inMusic family of brands.”

Algoriddim, the Munich maker of the djay app, makes software, not hardware; it says partners including Reloop and Pioneer DJ build controllers for it.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A modular relaunch from Leuven.

The name came back after a gap. Rodec says Tom De Ridder, a music producer and long-time MX180 user, arrived as chief executive in 2021, and in 2022 its homepage announced: “After a seven year hiatus, Rodec is back.” The relaunched brand showed at Superbooth in Berlin in 2022 and in later years. Its website names TDR Media BV, of Leuven, as the operator, and says it no longer makes or sells the legacy mixers.

The new range is modular rather than a straight reissue. The MX Modular is a performance console with ten 500-series slots, an adapter for Rodec’s own 100-series modules, Lundahl transformers on the master output and an 18-in, 18-out USB-C interface, the company says. Around it sit the ONE, a portable host for 100-series modules; the M-501 microphone preamplifier, whose equalisation Rodec says is “lifted from the iconic 1986 MX-18”; the SideStepper M-110 gater; and the BUNK 01 phono preamplifier, which it says is “assembled by hand in Belgium” in a bamboo case made by the furniture maker Eletta Daemen. Those are its claims. Dealers it lists include Thomann, Vintage King, KMR Audio in London and SchneidersLaden in Berlin. Independently, gearnews reported in November 2025 that the Ministyler — a shrunken Sherman Filterbank made in partnership with Rodec, following an earlier collaboration called the Restyler — was on sale in a bundle with the ONE at $677, £622 or €699, and called the MX Modular “intimidatingly expensive.”

One domain trap: an archived rodec.com page from 2001 belonged to Rodec Campbell Industries of Edmonton, Canada, an unrelated firm.

For a design guide, Rodec shows how a small maker’s name can outlast its factory. Compare Allen & Heath, the British mixer maker, and Pioneer DJ, whose club mixers set a different standard. For this guide we use fader black, brushed aluminium and an orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Rodec’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.