Every so often, while feverishly scrabbling through the racks of magazines in your local newsery, you might happen across something that looks not unlike the regular IM&RW — but isn't. This could be one of two things. Either Tokai have gone into the publishing business or you've picked up one of the IM yearbooks.

These weighty tomes are annual reference works giving the sort of in-depth coverage we can't give to an area in the normal monthly magazine. The Studio Guide, which should be out within minutes, has up-to-date and (hopefully) accurate details and prices on thousands of items of gear and all the UK's top studios. The other two are the Sound Reinforcement Guide, a similar look at masses of on-stage equipment, and the On The Road Guide, an invaluable aid to the touring band with details of hotels, all-night petrol, music shops and local media all over the country. If you need to buy or sell a piece of gear, the two reference guides are the sort of thing you can't afford to be without, covering the market as they do and as no others can.

Likewise our Frankfurt review, which you'll find nestled between its own covers in the centre of this magazine. It gets to the bits of the massive Messe that only IM can reach — well over a hundred of the products that are going to make the news in the future, all given the merciless, if slightly myopic, scrutiny of the expert reviewers that we flew out to Germany by first class biplane for the occasion.

So if you fancy splashing some cash on anything musical, try consulting the IM&RW guides and the Frankfurt special — one tells you all about the features, the other all about the future. Simple, eh?