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British Music Fair | |
Article from One Two Testing, August 1985 |
special preview of the all-important Olympia equipment show-your best chance to see the latest in instrument technology
Touch real instruments. See convincing demonstrations. Listen to sales talk. Make your own mind up. All these activities are yours for the taking when you visit the British Music Fair in early August. Most of the biggest instrument and musical gear makers and marketers will be at Olympia 2 in West London to show off their new and not-so-new equipment to anyone willing to shell out the three quid admission charge. We're promised events, demos, concerts and even recitals, and of course you can even come and visit the One Two Testing stand.
You'll find the most honest, useful and entertaining magazine in the whole of the known universe on stand G2 at the BMF, and we can promise to look after you when you come to see us. There'll be a big competition to win some desirable instruments and equipment, and the good Dr Spliff will be organising a clinic where you can have your ailments sorted out by One Two contributors and friends — perhaps even a few starlets. Also on the One Two stand you'll be able to see the evolution of the modern musician as drawn by our ace cartoonist Martin Rowson, and we'll be keeping you up to date with what to see where at the show.
Meanwhile, on the next few pages (starting left) we'll give you a few hints as to what brand new gear is promised for the BMF — plus a few hot items that we hope the makers manage to get ready in time, but that we thought you nosey lot would want to know about anyway. See you there, linchpins.
Olympia 2, Hammersmith Road, London W14.
Friday 2 August to Sunday 4 August inclusive, 10am to 7pm.
Admission £3 over-14s, £1.50 under-14s, discounts for parties and MU members (details from box office, (Contact Details)). Nearest tube Olympia (access from Piccadilly or District lines). Buses: 9, 27, 28, 33, 49, 73, and 91. Parking: multi-storey, covered car-park off Olympia Way.
After an uncertain and nomadic history of British distribution in the last couple of years, Rickenbacker have settled down to a permanent UK office, with stocks and spares. The BMF will be the first opportunity for the new team to exhibit its full range of wares.
There'll be no new models this year — diehard Rickenbacker fans apparently threaten suicide when such suggestions are made but there will be three new colours — Midnight Blue, Silver and Bright Red. Doubtless the Samaritans' earpieces will be red hot.
But perhaps the most hopeful news is from Rickenbacker International UK's director Trevor Smith: "We now carry a large selection of parts, too. It's amazing how many people request odd screws or knobs, because for years nobody knew where to get hold of them". From now on it's (Contact Details).
In addition to the DK-80 Bi-timbric synth and EX-80 synth expander module which SIEL are already known for, the BMF will see displays of the compact DK-70 four-octave keyboard with similar sound generation to the expander. It retails at £499 and comes with 'a stage playing arm'. Tell the one-fingered synth player of your choice.
There's new software to see including MIDI Digital Delay and Multi-Tracking programs for the Commodore 64. See, too, the Sound Buggy, an add-on unit for the SIEL CMK-49 keyboard letting you control rhythms, sounds, arpeggios, keyboard splits and bass lines from the CBM-64.
Finally, SIEL are launching "a completely digital low cost series of MK keyboards which are RS-232 and MIDI compatible". Priced from "£175 upwards" and dubbed "home and educational". We'll have to wait until Olympia to check the tone.
Did you know that SIEL stands for Societa Industrie Elettroniche spa? You did.
An A to Z of Ruddall Carte products would begin with Adler and Huller bassoons and contras bassoons and end with Zanki cymbals. In between you'd find over a dozen names representing woodwind and brass, and percussion. "Rudall Carte are rapidly becoming one of the leading UK distributors in the band, orchestral and educational areas of music," they tell us. And before disappearing they mention that this dictionary of blowing and hitting "will be on show on Stand 192 at the British Music Fair, together with a brand new range of Japanese flutes from silver-plated student models to hand crafted silver instruments with all options."
"The integration of large-scale professional studio recording techniques with the small-scale 'ministudio' demo generation is a critical link in bridging the gap between the initial creative process and the final studio realisation." What we think the American-born Audio Media Research are actually going on about here are four-track cassette decks.
Luckily they can be forgiven their verbose brochures because they've come up with some fairly slick looking machines. The four-track deck itself is free standing and can be accompanied by four- or six-channel mixers that fit into a supporting bridge that holds the deck proudly in mid air.
The DCR 421 deck runs at standard 1⅞ips, offers Dolby B or C, a read out with memory that acts as tape counter or stopwatch timer (cute) and 12-step LED meters. Pity about the single headphone socket.
The desks are the bog standard CDM 420 (four-channel) with high and low eq and a seven-band graphic, plus the more sophisticated CDM 642 (six-channel) offering high, low and a mid parametric amongst the goodies.
The company is owned by a certain Mr and Mrs Peavey, yes the very same, and distribution in the UK will be handled by Peavey UK. Target prices — a lot can happen to the exchange between now and later Autumn when they're expected — are £499 for the recorder and £319/E499 respectively for the four- and six-channel mixers. Graphic eqs, amps and speaker enclosures also on the way.
AKG means mikes, and at the BMF they're keen to draw your attention to the D321 which offers, they say, "a dramatic reduction in handling and shock noise" thanks to the efforts of tireless scientists. Or there's the C535EB, a condenser mike designed, as you'd imagine, for the more delicate confines of the recording studio, but discovered now to be so rugged that even the strongest roadie would have trouble reducing it to crushed metal and foam. Not only mikes, though — mini monitors, cans, and the wonderful sounding Singing Blackboard. This is apparently a teaching aid, does not seem to be MIDI-equipped, and appears totally analogue in concept. At last.
Look, we know Casio have got all professional lately with the CZ synths, and that it's dead fashionable to say, "Yeah, the other lot were really toys, y'know? Innovative toys, sure, but I've waited for the CZs, I knew they'd do it." But a SEQUENCER? Yup. It's the SZ1. It's MIDI-based, mais naturellement mes braves, has 1800 steps inside for you to jump around on, expands via a RAM cartridge, dances along with the singer during the encore, and still costs less than three tons. The CZ5000 you know about, cos you read last month's issue. Anyway, it's part of the Casio-goes-pro line — the flagship, no less — and it will be proddable at the BMF. There are plenty of new Casio toys, too. The usual stuff-teaching lights above notes, presets, rhythm patterns, you know. What about the flat screen TVs, though, Casio? Two models are on sale in Japan, the TV21 (very witty, chaps) and the TV1000, going at about £60 and £180 respectively. Only toys, though, of course.
No doubt thanks to our Freff's ravings concerning the Pitchrider 2000 in last month's fun-filled One Two, Rosetti have decided to import the device from its Canadian home, and will have it on show at the BMF. So bone up on the July issue before you go. Rosetti also have some software to fill the screens of DX and computer owners (ie most of Western civilisation). New amps, too, are promised from an amalgam called Cooper/Haines. Haines we guess is the same Ray Haines who brought us the excellent Pro-Amp units — but what of Cooper? A wholly independent collaborator, we would hope. JMS will fill the Rosetti stand with noises like "cstascch" and "bkaaaaaop" as they demo the new RMS14H digital percussion unit and RMS15H programmable drum-to-MIDI box — and harking back to Pitchrider for a sec, maybe the 7000 will show, too (see NAMM, p11).
Replacement graphite necks, anyone? Could you wait a bit, then. We've jumped the gun here since ESP are just perfecting the aforementioned necks which might make it in time for the BMF but should at least be in Britain by Autumn.
For the moment they're offering two standard graphite swaps — Strat and P-bass using the usual bolt holes. The change to graphite doesn't just give you a pretty carbon-fibre weave pattern along the back (a la Status by Rob Green). The material solves virtually all guitar neck problems. It will be the fashionable substance for the hip six- and four-stringer over the next year.
Firstly it eliminates dead spots — all of them. This is because graphite's natural resonant frequency is way above the audio range. Wood is within the range, and so it gets in the way of certain notes. A useful side effect is that graphite can give you harmonics above some frets that you'd never hear with wood.
Because of the inherent strength, necks can be made as thin as you like without fear of a lethal whipping. And graphite is what the business calls 'unconditionally stable under all humidity conditions'... it doesn't get bendy when it gets hot.
The two bad points are the finish — it's difficult to polish because it's so hard, though apparently, ESP have conquered this one — and, of course, price: about £250 per neck. It's still half the cost of some purpose-made graphite guitars, however.
They are being imported by Chandler Guitars in Richmond, Surrey ((Contact Details)), who, on another tangent are also offering a super hum screening process for guitars. Originally prompted by Eric Clapton whose black Strat was suffering jip under a new light show, they tried lining the pickup cavities with the same foil used to shield microphone transformers. It's pricey, but it succeeds in cutting out low and high hum where copper shielding can normally manage only one or the other.
Attached to the Siel stand you'll also be able to see some new speakers from UK makers Frazer Wyatt, who promise eight new "competitively priced" speakers developed from their rather good dx Fullrange line. They'll also be powering them up with a new 80 watt amp, and given the healthy spec that FW quote to us, we have a sneaking suspicion that electronic drummers will be particularly interested in these new combinations of amp and speakers. FW themselves also hint that PA, keyboard, bass guitar and — wait — Chapman Stick users will be interested. We can think of two Chapman Stick players — and one of them is American. Any road up, Frazer Wyatt will announce the prices of the various new bits and pieces at the show, and suggest that the figures will be "attractive". Off we go.
MIDI pads and a digital drum kit definitely, say Roland. And there's a chance, we suspect, nudging our helpful Japanese source once again and dropping the occasional 1500 yen note, that a unit called the MK7 MIDI sound module may turn up. Or even another Boss overdrive pedal. You want more details? Let's see. Let's be definite first. The digital drum kit will be there for the hitting in its finished form, having gone through various prototypes. Are they too late, these Roland types? We shall hear. The digital reverb, the SRV2000, will also be a reality. This too has been given the once, twice or even thrice over in prototype form, and the R&D boys have upped the spec in various areas since earlier international trade shows — there are now 32 memories instead of 24, for example, and a longer predelay of 160mS is available. And MIDI pads? Control a synth sound, or anything drum-machinist in origin, with these new dustbin lids, called the Pad 8. What a lot of people want, in fact (hi Andy), and what we might call a percussion controller. Speaking of which, the TR727 will be in situ — that's the Latin percussion version of the 707. And so to theory. This MK7 MIDI "sound module" generates drum sounds, bass synth noises, and has a 106-like "main synth" section that's split 4/2 notes for accompaniment and "lead". We know no more. Like a Korg Super Section, dare we venture? Whether it makes the show is another matter. Roland's demos will be performed thanks to "top session musicians" Mark Wood and Michael Giles (of the fabulous new combo Giles Giles and Fripp). Roland's Alan Townsend will also be showing off.
"We'll be showing Sennheiser mikes on our stand," said Hayden Laboratories. "Oh my God, they're really expensive," we exclaimed. "No, not all of them," they replied, almost immediately. So we thought we'd go and have a look after all.
From Vesta Fire: MPR-2 modular parametric now covering 45Hz to 15kHz, plus or minus 18dB and variable bandwidth from 1/10th octave to two octaves — £89; SL-200 stereo compressor/limiter, replacing SL-020 (improved and cheaper), with XLR connectors on the balanced inputs and outputs — £283; DIG-411 digital delay replacing DIG-410 (as good, and cheaper), with 1024ms, hold, modulation, 16k bandwidth — £213; DIG-420 rackmount sampler/delay, one second sampling, CV and gate in for external pitch change — £338; PR-1000 rackmount instrument pre-amp with three band parametric, limiter, stereo FX loop and headphones socket — £265; MR-1 six-channel, four-track rackmount multi-recorder DBX 'very classy' (they tell us) — £689.
Westone guitars are "now the No 1 selling Japanese guitar in the UK," proclaim distributors FCN. This, we would affirm, is generally good news, as most Westones continue to offer good value for money and are well constructed instruments. So do cast your eyes over the range while you're at the show: even though we weren't too keen on the Steinberger copy in a recent review, the Super Headless bass with body wood attached looks a better bet, and the DX range and Spectrum STs look well worth running a finger or two over. Or should that be: look well worth running over with a finger or two? Which do you like best? We rather fancy the trem-laden DX six-string. But is it FM? All these questions...
The new Hohner Professional Headless Series we mentioned in Shredder a month back (designed with the cooperation of Ned Steinberger) but there are also a total of 20 new basses and guitars in their standard professional series. Guitar amps from 35 to 75 watts known as Soundproducers will be around, plus some MIDI-equipped digital delays, something of a departure for Hohner, we think.
Hohner does have a keyboard division which has normally looked stronger in the home market, but MIDI strikes here as well. So does break-dancing and airline technology. Apparently the D-180 organ is the first in the world to boast break-dancing patterns in the drum machine and has had its control panel designed to ergonomic principles normally found in aircraft cockpits.
Much, much smaller but equally ergonomic, no doubt, is the Weekender package, not a trip to Clacton, but a new budget harmonica which includes instructions for beginners.
Elka are a flash company — they sent us a Telex instead of a press release and, just to let you know that we are influenced by TV advertising, we took it straight through to the MD's office and interrupted a high level meeting to show it to him. "Oh right, thank you Enid," he said, and looked puzzled as he read the contents. "There's only one thing... Wait a minute. OK, take this down, girl. 'When all the world seems shortly to become enmeshed in one great long MIDI patch cord, Elka of Italy have done the impossible. They will be showing a revolutionary musette, which we understand would be called an accordion by ordinary folk, which has MIDI capability. Now dire Radio 2-type nonsense can benefit from the Musical Instrument Digital Interface too.' That should do it. Have the paper clips arrived?"
Phew wow! as the excellent Farmers Boys would have it. Coloured audio cables! Not so daft-ever tried looking for that particularly useful lead you need for recording hook-up number 127, and you're faced with umpteen dozen grey leads of identical hue, save for the couple of dozen black ones? Soundwires will be the people showing the lengths of wire wrapped up in pretty plastic at the BMF, and thereabouts you'll also be able to espy the Connectronics range of audio cables, now available in handy pre-cut form so you can pick'n'mix. Don't think the Farmers Boys have a song called "Only Connect", yet, do they?
Apologies owed to Simmons for getting the price of their SDS9 kit wrong last month. It's £1199.99 inc VAT. And glad to say that you can get pads with XLR-type connectors with use for the SDS7, as well as the jack socket versions which we thought were the only ones around.
Dave Simmons also wrote countering reviewer Andy Duncan's advocation of computer-based sampling percussion systems such as the Greengate, favoured by Andy for its updateable software.
"What happens when you hit a sampled sound harder?" quizzed Mr Simmons. "Higher harmonics? Changes in Pitch? Change in harmonic structure? Longer sounds? Would Andy have us all using sampling keyboards to produce drum music, or is there room for performing percussionists?
"Of course the Greengate will become outdated by its hardware/speed/memory size."
Very true, at the moment, but we thought the advantage of software-based systems was that should it become possible to produce higher harmonics, pitch changes, etc, or any other improvement it's a matter of getting new software for your existing machine rather than buying a whole new instrument. And if we're talking about hardware going out of date, surely that applies to every musical instrument ever made.
As for performance, we rather thought that when someone like Andy, whose own drumming background includes touring and recording for Linx, Difford and Tillbrook, Boomtown Rats and Phil Lynott, to name but four, says the new Simmons pads "are as close as any imitation has yet managed to get to the feel of the original flapping skin," it's a compliment.
From Cutec: the MR404 four-track cassette deck, 3¾ips, with bass and treble and aux send and return on each track, DBX, varispeed, headphone monitoring — £481; MX 1242 12-channel, four-track, mixer, balanced with breakjacks — £565; CDM-3 mike replacing the CMD-4 at £28.
From MTR; PB-1 64-way jack patchbay, normal/un-normal link — £49; TP-1200 600W per channel Mosfet power amp with input compressors and top spec — £848.
Who said lists are no fun.
Right, is all the gear back in its boxes? Okay, time for some between news stories fun. Awards for what BMF actually stands for are now ready to be handed out. Current contenders are 'Bloody MIDI Fever' (Colbert), 'Broken My Foot' (Bacon, who plans to walk a lot), 'Banjos Make the Future' (Arron) and 'Belgrano Missed the Falklands' (Thatcher).
You'll be able to touch the Allan Holdsworth guitar reviewed in last month's One Two on the Ibanez stand, and the Japs also promise a "quality headless bass at a highly competitive price". More exciting will be the line of digital effects new from Ibanez, most of which come in pedal format — amongst those on offer is what could be the world's first digital chorus. As usual One Two hacks and of course readers will be impressed by noises rather than science. Ibanez' distributor also does the Tama business, so if you didn't catch the Tama electronic drums last year you can have a bash at this show. Tama also seem to be getting worked up about a new line of keyboard stands. I suppose we should be supportive.
A Yamaha Professional Standard Trevor Horn, did that say? Ah no, sorry, Tenor Horn. Just started to wonder whether the Yamaha Trev would have MIDI Thru or not... No, the Yamaha brass is on the Bill Lewington stand, and you can take your mind away from all that electronic nonsense by listening to what real brass instruments sound like when they're shifting air around if you vist the Lewington Yamaha Brass Band's shindig in the Apex Room on the Saturday of the show. No doubt when the chaps shuffle off to perform this gig they'll remember to lock up the Muramatsu solid gold flutes which also lurk on the Lewington stand.
No news from distributors Rose-Morris on the new Korg products to be shown at the BMF, but we do happen to know that there are two new items on their way from Japan — let's hope they make it to Olympia. The first is the SQD1 MIDI Recorder, which offers quite tempting real-time, step-time, transfer and edit facilities by the look of the advance pictures we peeked at through a Japanese keyhole. There is also an onboard disc system for storage, too, but we'll just have to wait and see. The other advance news we can bring you is of the GR1 Gated Reverb rack-mount unit, with control over the gate's threshold and decay time, a straight reverb level pot, and basic tone adjustment knobs. We foresee the usual read-it-first-in-One-Two scenario as regards these two.
Sad to say that Farfisa are not offering a brand new version of the organ that made their name on countless hits in the Sixties (Sixties: halcyon period when every record made was a classic and a mega bit, and nobody had to do any work because they'd never had it so good, or something). Instead they're boasting split keyboards, MIDI, transposers, "best value" and all those usual kind of Eighties things. But they do claim to offer "musical games" on the so-called FK15, which alone could make a visit worthwhile. So what happened to the Seventies?
The main noise from Rose-Morris before the BMF was that they'll be holding regular demos on their stand, every hour on the hour in fact, plus an additional hour-long concert here and there. The poor blighters roped in to perform in this merciless regime are Paul Brooks, a keyboard-type person who apparently had the bad fortune to appear on the Wogan TV extravaganza, and guitar-fingerer Gordon Giltrap, who we hear will be presented with a silver disc for some ancient LP or the other during the show (presumably in one of his very few idle moments between sets). But what of new instruments and gear from this big distributor? New Vox amplifiers, we're assured, which are certain to be of a valve-assisted nature and therefore will sound big, chunky, and loud. Good, good. But no mention of the re-release of the fabulous Vox Phantom 12-string of 1960s fame — what ever happened to that idea, Mr Rose (or is it Mr Morris?). Ovation's cheap sideline, Applause, will be putting up some new solid-bodied guitars for the first time — let's hope they're more successful than Ovation's late-70s solids. R-M also promise Takamine guitars with fret-mounted pickups. All this on a 1280sq ft stand. Magic.
Hail to thee, blithe prize-winner. Here we see Glyn Wilcox (a teacher), Toni Markwick (a Sycist), and Cardboard Box (a deeply wonderful Sequential Six-Trak keyboard). Toni gives box to Glyn, Glyn takes box, another step in the mighty SYCOmp is completed. All are happy.
Glyn, from Leyton and upon whom fate plays strange tricks, already has a Six-Trak but still went in for the Syco competition, gleefully imagining the potential of MIDI-ing two of the beasts together. And what happens? He wins it, proof that God is an asynchronous serial data communication base.
AND NOW. Step forward Pete Wellsbury of Penn, Wolverhampton for you are the winner of SYCOmp 4, and shortly to be the proud possessor of a Yamaha RX15 drum machine. For SYCOmp 4, sporting readers will remember that entering involved building a sentence as long as possible, where each word began with the letters SY. Pete's total was 851 letters. We counted, and one day we'll print it.
Technics are threatening new MIDI compact keyboards at the BMF, but are staying tight-lipped about them until the moment the sheets come off at Olympia. Go on, tell us something.
Nope. Not just a tit-bit. 'Well...' yes?? 'they'll be available in Autumn.' All right, we'll contain outselves in patience. But we happen to know of the existence of the PCM Digital 10 "digital piano", and the PCM DP50 drum machine. Could they constitute the secret in question?
Chance to see four new kits from Trak, if you haven't already hunted them out in the sharp shops. From the bottom. The TR-105P fits in under the 200, 300 and 400 series incorporating many of their basic features. Shells are nine ply Lauan (available in standard or 2in oversize power toms) with black lugs, mounting brackets, T-rods and hardware. The rims are chromed and flanged.
Added to the 400 series are the TR-425J and TR-418W. The former is a jazz-sized kit offering 10x7 and 12x8 toms, 14x14 floor Tom, 18x14 bass drum and 14x6 wood snare. The 418, dubbed 'Overdrive', contributes 8x9, 10x9, 14x11 and 15x12 toms on stands (the latter replacing the floor tom). And for those who haven't put their own together, there's a double bass drum kit again in the 400 range, called the TR-449P. Sizes here are toms at 10x9, 12x10, 13x11, 14x12, 16x16 and 18x16. The all-important big-twins-sitting-on-the-floor are 22x16 and 24x16. Aren't there a lot of numbers and measurements in drums?
Two additions to the Arion clutch of pedals, outside their normal collection of effects. First is the HW-02, an update on their first Hot Watt headphone practice amp called (guess) the 'Hot Watt 2'. Instead of Echo, Chorus, Distortion and Sustain, we now have Echo, Chorus, Overdrive and Metal Master. In place of the previous A440Hz tuning signal is a tone switch (high and low). Apart from the slightly varied cosmetics we suspect (cynically, no doubt) that the rest of the song remains the same.
Next up is the HU-8500 Stage Tuner, an LED-based tuner that can sit on the floor in line with the rest of your effects. It zeros in on the usual, E,A,D,G,B,E, then a nine LED display tells you that you're flat, sharp or dead on (the single green LED in the centre of all the red ones, blinks triumphantly). Sound a string and press down on the footswitch pedal when you want to confirm your frequencies. A clever alternative to the dozens of tuners on the market (even if we at One Two Towers still prefer needles and meters to moving lights).
As we've had just about everything else with MIDI capability, we might as well have MIDI effects, too. That's what Akai thought, and you'll be able to see their new line of ME products at BMF — but they don't seem to be showing their updated version of the AX80 synth, the AX90. No matter, there's plenty to interest in the MIDI effects crowd. Most obviously interesting is the ME20A MIDI Digital Arpeggiator, which'll connect up with your existing MIDI-equipped synth (course you have) to give two different arpeggio patterns, up and down, and a 128-note sequence capability. There's also a button on the thing marked "Chord Rec" — could this be a poly facility? It'll sell for about £120. Can't wait to try it... Then there's the ME10D MIDI Digital Delay, the first, claim Akai, to offer digital delay without the need for analogue conversion. Claims aside, it's the sound we'll be interested in, specially at another £120. At the same price again is the last of the MIDI effects to be launched this time around, the ME15F Digital Fader, which presumably will give you MIDI'd control over your output levels. There will be more on the Akai stand to take note of: some speakers for studio monitoring (SG200), a wonderful-sounding computer system which will doubtless feature composing facilities via MIDI (the CPZ1000, with optional recording add-on, the RZ1000), and a purpose-built mastering 2 track cassette deck (the GX912). Try and keep us away.
What makes a keyboard amp different from any other type of amp? Good question, you'll go far. Hohner figure that you put in a two-way speaker system to nuzzle up more cosily to the keyboards' wide dynamic range, and then sling two inputs on the front panel so that multiple keyboard set-ups (well, two keyboards) can be accommodated. After that things get more ordinary: the usual volume tone and reverb business (though reverb is independently switchable on either of the two channels, which is smart). Fane speakers do the noisy stuff, and there are outs for cans or external goings-on. The KB55 will deliver 55 watts and the KB75... no, you'll have to guess. Or better still, let your ears guess.
Sound and communication specialists Toa Electronics Ltd will be showing a complete range of products from their professional sound division. Latest gear will include the 380 SE three-way loudspeaker system offering 360Ws of continuous power through a 15in driver, constant directivity horn and horn tweeter — ideal for keyboards, they say. Alongside are the 30 SD three-way reflex speaker for PA (12in, small radial horn coupled with a compression driver and a tweeter), and the RS-21M compact speaker with an extended frequency response dealing with 100W at 80hms.
'Brand X' drums said the press release. Interesting name we thought. Who thought that one up? 'No-one', said Stentor, 'that's what we're calling them until we announce the full name at the fair.' Silly us. It's promised that the kits will be unusually robust for their low price tag — around £300 for a five drum set-up complete with stands and cymbals and made in Europe, not Taiwan. The bass drum is 22in and all other drums are double headed.
Otherwise Stentor will be showing their Kawai guitars (used by Black Lace, there's a thing) and the cheaper series of Vulcans plus parts and spares by Double Eagle, Schaller and TK.
Details about the Dynacord MCC-1 MIDI Control Computer were concealed at the back of the booklet which spent most of the time discussing the electronic theory before it got onto the gadget itself. The MCC-1, as far as we can make out from the 'imaginatively' translated German can switch the programs on four different connected MIDI keyboards or effects on receiving program info from the master synth. For example, selecting sound 17 on the master synth could be used to call up four complementary voices on four other keyboards. In all there are two banks of 100 programmable MIDI set-up memories, or as Dynacord say "MIDI... indicates the possibility of a data exchange between devices that are run in MIDI compound."
Show Report
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