Lexicon EMT 240
Not a synthesizer, not a Lexicon design. It's the gold-foil plate reverb that studios kept in their outboard racks and named in their gear lists.
Overview
The EMT 240 is a reverb unit, and the first thing a collector has to untangle is the branding. The model carries the EMT name, yet it turns up in studio documentation alongside Lexicon gear. The naming is confusing. Anyone chasing one of these should treat "Lexicon EMT 240" as a search convenience, not a manufacturer statement. What the surviving studio records do make clear is the thing itself: a gold-foil reverb that working rooms listed by name in their outboard equipment inventories.
The EMT 240 shows up in period studio directories not as a headline purchase but as a line item, the kind of gear a room mentions because clients scanning the list will recognize it. Different Fur in San Francisco listed an "EMT 240 gold foil stereo echo" among its outboard extras, right alongside an AKG BX 20 and a Lexicon 224 digital echo. Soundcastle in Los Angeles ran an "EMT 240 Gold Foil Reverb" next to its Eventide Instant Flanger and Harmonizer. Maranatha Studios in Santa Ana listed an EMT 240 with its AKG BX-20 and Lexicon Prime Time. That's three rooms in the LA and Bay Area studio scene, same unit, and in each case the plate-style reverb shares rack space with the early digital boxes that would eventually replace it.
A gold-foil plate and a Lexicon 224 in the same outboard list is a snapshot of the transition in professional reverb. The mechanical plate was still earning its keep while digital units moved in beside it.
The documentation doesn't give the hard engineering. There's no frequency response, no decay time, no dimensions, no weight and no price in the surviving material. There's just the repeated confirmation that this was a gold-foil stereo reverb and that professional rooms treated it as a named piece of outboard. The unit's reputation is documented. Its spec sheet, at least in these records, is not.
What It Is and Where It Sat
Studios listed it as an echo or reverb chamber unit in their outboard equipment, which is how a plate would be categorized in a 1970s or 1980s room. It sat in the rack with the delays, flangers, and harmonizers, not in the instrument list.
The pattern across the directories helps with dating the unit. The grouping suggests the 240 was in service through the late 1970s and into the 1980s, the window when these directories were published. It was still being named in room inventories when digital reverb was already established, which says something about how the foil plate held up against the new boxes.
Nothing survives in the available documentation about the circuit, the transducer, the foil tensioning, or the control set. The published record only confirms the category and the reputation.
In the Studio Record
The most useful thing the period sources give is the company the EMT 240 kept. At Different Fur, it was listed as "EMT 240 gold foil stereo echo" alongside an AKG BX 20, a Lexicon 224 digital echo, Dolby and dbx noise reduction, and a rack of UREI limiters. At Soundcastle, the "EMT 240 Gold Foil Reverb" sat with an ITI BX20, an Eventide Instant Flanger, an Eventide Harmonizer, and an Eventide Digital Delay. At Maranatha, the EMT 240 shared space with an AKG BX-20, UREI LA3A, Universal 175 Limiter, and a Lexicon Prime Time.
Read those three lists together and the EMT 240 looks like the plate reverb a serious room owned when it also owned a Lexicon digital delay or a BX-20. It wasn't the only reverb in the rack, it was one of several, and it was listed by name because the name carried weight with the clients reading the directory. That's not a review score. It's the fact that working engineers kept it in the signal chain and studios kept advertising it.
The directories don't provide any measure of how it sounded relative to the 140 or the digital units beside it. There's no period review text, no measured decay, no A/B commentary. The reputation is inferred from its persistence in these lists, not from any documented comparison.
Collectibility
The EMT 240's collectibility rests on the EMT name and the gold-foil plate format rather than on any documented spec. The surviving records don't include original pricing, production years, or unit counts, so there's no reliable way to characterize the market from the available material. The unit does appear in professional studio inventories across multiple rooms, which makes it a working piece rather than a curiosity.
For anyone considering one, the practical unknowns are significant. There's no documented service information, no parts availability, and no known failure modes in these sources. A foil plate reverb is a mechanical device, and mechanical devices age, but the specific maintenance picture for the EMT 240 isn't recorded here. Buyers should research the unit on their own and inspect any example carefully, because the published record doesn't cover condition, parts, or repair.
The record does support the unit's place in the transition from plate to digital reverb. It shows up in the same outboard list as a Lexicon 224, the old mechanical sound and the new digital sound sharing a rack.
Similar items on eBay
No exact Lexicon EMT 240 listings are live right now — these searches show current Lexicon and similar vintage synth gear on eBay:
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.