A small Town in Germany

Bierkellers and bipolar transistors, Munich and MIDI, lederhosen and LEDs - obvious partners, no?

No, I didn't think so either, until Dynacord flew a small herd of journalists to their factory in the excessively picturesque Bavarian town of Straubing the other week. The purpose of the visit, at least when they'd dragged everyone from the local lager establishments, was to see the very newest and most interesting of the Dynacord marque, take a look at the factory and heighten Dynacord's somewhat low UK profile.

Sadly, they're waiting until the Frankfurt fair to unleash their very latest project, so more we cannot utter save to say that it's not exactly new to these pages and it'll make a lot of people stand up and take notice...

But in the meantime there's no shortage of new and interesting gear; chiefly the MIDI amps which go by the name of the Reference series and have completely programmable controls. They can store 16 user-set combinations of gain, volume, drive (on the tube guitar amps), tone (or graphic eq and notch filter on the bass amps) and effects including chorus and reverb. You can step through the 16 programmes by an included footswitch or call them up via a bigger MIDI footswitch controller. But this isn't completely new - what is a breakthrough is the fact that as the amps are fitted with MIDI they can be used with MIDI effects, synthesizers or whatever, enabling you to change patches on everything simultaneously. Maybe at least this will force Luddite guitarists to get into MIDI like everyone else has had to do.

Further up the level of MIDI sophistication, Dynacord have got a very useful gadget called an MCC-1 MIDI Control Computer; basically a programmable routing/channel changing device which is packed with facilities enabling you to control umpteen patches from a master keyboard, or indeed, the MIDI footswitch unit. Effects, drum machines, synths and so on can all be linked together via the versatile little unit and operated simultaneously. In these modular days it's a gadget that has a huge number of uses and at less than £400 it's got to be worth a look for the hi-tech fraternity.

On the drum front, there are some excellent new samples for the electronic kit, and though there have been a few delays getting the Big Brain million-odd step sequencer and the Boomer chip blower/sampler into production, these are promised real soon.

Of course Dynacord make vast numbers of products from PA mixers and power amps to speaker cabinets, studio effects, MIDI units... you name it. But they're hoping that the amps (which, incidentally, are being sold in a very fetching sub-Habitat red and white) will get their name into the professional market in a big way. Their stuff is very well made but it's also priced to match, so they're looking to the likes of Trace Elliot as competitors for the money-no-object top bands' custom - and with the new amps they should definitely make a Mark or two.

Rooms for improvement

For those who jumped in and snapped up one of Roland's innovative £1375 digital reverbs from the batch that came over from Japan during late summer, there's some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that if you'd waited to get one of the SRV-2000's that are currently being imported, you'd have had sixteen more factory programmed 'rooms' in the memory banks. The good news is that since the specification of the machine has not changed (the extra programmes are in memory banks which previously duplicated programmes stored elsewhere in the machine) Roland are making these programmes available to all SRV-2000 owners so if you possess a model which hasn't already got them, you can write them in yourself.

We understand that Roland have taken considerable care in preparing these preset ideas, and the unit is sophisticated enough to merit some guidance in discovering its capabilities. The cost of an s.a.e. to Roland UK, (Contact Details) would be a small price to pay for adding their reverb ideas to your own.

Hall in a Good Cause

So there's this gig at the local village hall, right. Halloween party, organised by the local, The Bell. They did the food and booze, see. And there was this band, right. Blues, R'n'B, mostly covers. Alright, they were. Not bad, anyway. They had a few good guitarists. A bloke called Mick Ralphs, for one. Andy Powell, what used to be in Washbone Ish or summat. Robin George, a young feller, and Micky Moody. And this hairy bloke called Jimmy Page. He was pretty good.

Drummers? Drummers? There was loads. Simon Kirke, John Coghlan, Chris Slade, to name but a few. Patrick Moraz was up there tinkling the ivories, Elmer Gantry got up and had a sing, and everyone seemed to have a right good time...

As well they should have done. The occasion was the annual Halloween party in the tiny Home Counties village of Waltham St. Lawrence — not the usual site for a superstar gig. The venue was the tiny (150 capacity) village hall. And the reason for this unwarranted burst of Rock 'n' Roll was the local parish council's village hall restoration fund. Waltham St. Lawrence's secret weapon in this case was Roland exec Dave 'guitar' Green and his wife Caro. At the merest mention of the urgent need of cash the couple got on the phone to their friends and contacts in the business; the megastars pledged their support, the committee sold 150 tickets at a tenner each, and the rest is history.

"Everybody was brilliant," enthused Carol. "They even made it to rehearsals, and everybody who'd said they would come did. The atmosphere was fantastic, and all the players gave something to the auction we held afterwards. In total we raised about £1000 for the fund, even after paying for food and drink and all the organisation and so on."

Coming Soon - Led Zeppelin, Duran Duran, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and God jam in a phone box in aid of homes for aged donkeys...

Casio no no

Once in a blue moon we at IM find ourselves with egg on our faces. Hence the expression "The giant Galapagos Turtle only breeds when the IM staff get egg on their faces."

Anyway folks, it appears that the turtles have been at it again, because in our Synths of the Year Show (IM&RW Dec) we were in fact guilty of a minor injustice to Casio. In the review we stated that the CZ-5000 had only 32 onboard sounds, 16 of which were presets, and that there was no facility for dumping sounds to tape. We further stated that Casio had no plans for continuing their innovative Phase distortion programme, and that for this reason the instrument had the appearance of a dinosaur already.

All these comments we rescind. The CZ-5000 has in fact 64 memories, with 32 presets, there is facility for dumping to tape, and Casio are continuing with their phase distortion programme, so apologies all round... Oh and congratulations on the birth of 465,798,327 baby turtles.

Strung up

More news from The Bass Centre (see D-Tuner piece): They're now marketing their own brand of bass strings, made in America by a firm who apparently supply a lot of famous brand names with their merchandise, and, via a distribution deal direct with the US, very reasonably priced at £12.50 a set.

I bunged some on my Eko acoustic bass on the principle that if they'd make that sound good they must be okay, and lo and behold, they managed it. A good dose of roundwound top end (as they are roundwounds, that's not unexpected) but with a fairly full bottom and punchy high-mid peak they gave the old shoebox quite a bit of bite. They're not too rough on the calluses either, and for the price I'd recommend them highly. One small point, though: the windings are staggered for Precision-type machine head arrangements so if you've got some sort of phobia about seeing differing amounts of bare string between nut and machine head, you won't like them on your two-tuners-per-side bass. A tiny quibble, though, because for the price I couldn't find a single other thing to be a miserable bastard about.

Hipshot D-Tuner

RRP £39.95

So there you are, plodding your way through this week's conversions for your social club set. Along comes, say, a Thompson Twins number. The drummer picks up the beat, the keyboard player fingers the chords tentatively, the guitarist strums along.

You the bassist, launch into the bassline. An easy one, you think. Bom, bom, bom, ba-bom... thunk. Yes, you've hit the nut because the line goes below E on the bottom string. So you take it up an octave - and suddenly all the bottom end's gone out of the sound.

What do you do? Either you hand over to the keyboard player and naff off to the pub, or you invest in a neat little gadget called the Hipshot D-tuner. Being marketed by The Bass Centre in Wapping, this device consists of a replacement machine head which features a small lever to drop the tuning of the string by a preset amount when you operate it.

The obvious use is to drop the bottom E by a tone (or, the manufacturers say, even further, to C sharp or C) so you can get those superdeep basslines that synths or sampling keyboards can produce and which the normal bass guitar can't.

I can report personally (because that nice man Barry at the aforementioned Centre lent me one) that it works very well. With a little practise you can get quite used to the altered tuning and it holds tune very well, dropping to D every time, once the strings have bedded in of course. Mind you, I did find things getting a bit dodgy when I tried C sharp and C. On the Fender Precision it was fitted to, the medium gauge E string got very floppy indeed and started becoming alarmingly prone to buzzing and choking. However, if you use it to drop to D it's excellent. At last, those thick, farty bottom-end tones come within reach on the normal bass. At just under 40 smackers I wouldn't class it as an essential for everyone, but if you've a desire to get down and boogie, this could be your answer. Contact the Bass Centre on (Contact Details).

Primo corner

He came, he saw, he took away a box with loads of knobs on it. 28 year old casino croupier Matt McDonagh didn't gamble on winning Studiomaster's excellent 80 watt 8:2 powered mixer and Primo mike worth nearly £900 from our September competition, but he did and was glad of it.

"If you print the picture of me looking this knackered I'll sue," he said.

I wouldn't bet on it...