Peter Howell

A defective unit was used for the "end explosion" in the 1980 Doctor Who theme, as demonstrated in this excerpt of the February 2, 1982 episode of The Music Arcade at 5:22. An ARP Odyssey MKIII was run through it to produce the sound.

Tim Whitnall: Peter, what's this over here? It looks very old-fashioned to me.

Peter Howell: Well, it is rather, but it's a very useful little box. It's a phase unit that I used for the end explosion. Let's just turn it on. [Turns on the 968, which rings twice. Switches to the ARP Odyssey.] Let's get a sound out of this... That was the old sound we had... [Plays an explosion sound on the ARP Odyssey.] Well, that's a fairly normal explode that's coming out of there. If we put it through this box, we'll see that it's got a sort of fireworks sound with it. [Plays the "end explosion" sound on the ARP Odyssey.] And although this box actually isn't working very well—in fact, it's gone wrong—I think it makes a very good noise anyway, and we never throw anything away at the Workshop.

Used for the 1980 Doctor Who theme, as demonstrated in this video at 4:39.

The next phrase was done using this box here, which is the vocoder, and this gives out an electronic, but voice-like, sort of quality and I'll show you what I mean.

In an interview with MusicTech, Peter Howell of the Radiophonic Workshop is noted for using the Novation Remote SL25 MK2 as part of his stage setup, alongside other gear like the Yamaha DX7 MkII and AKAI EWI wind controller.

RWS Stage Gear Peter Howell Yamaha DX7 MkII; Novation SL25 MkII controller; AKAI EWI wind controller; Roland VG-99 guitar modeller and MIDI controller; Ibanez guitar with MIDI bridge; MacBook Pro and MainStage.

In a video titled "peter howell in his new studio at the bbc radiophonic workshop in 1989," uploaded by BL MT on YouTube, the Roland S-550 Sampler can be seen and mentioned on Peter Howell's computer monitor during his time at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Studio F: Procussion and old RX5 drum machine (for cliks) on same MIDI circuit. Peter says assign RX5 to top note and set Procussion to ignore top note. Then in Vision you set metronome to top key on ‘drum machine’ channel.