Yours On A Plate

Bored with your Steinberger XL or GL guitar (you decadent little plutocrat)? Tired of that plain old black finish? That blank expression? Do you want your guitar to really say something?? Well, I can't help you there but it might be of interest to know that a certain Californian chap, Jim O'Connor, is making custom face plates for said guitars with extravagant, colourful designs on them: cosmic, floral — you name it Jimbo'll put it on your face.

His airbrush work has appeared on many a guitar hero's guitar: Eddie Van Halen, Rick Nielsen, Steve Lukather. The Steinberger models lend themselves particularly well to this transformation because their bodies are covered entirely by a removable face plate which comes off with the removal of six screws.

No price is given but for more information you can write Jim (as they say in the USA) at (Contact Details).

Peak Experience

First there was That's, the mega tape from Harman UK, and now there's This: CDXII, a new cassette from Memorex. A genuine breakthrough in particle technology, blah, blah... new cassette tape formulation, rant, rant... can't tell the difference between it and a compact disk (speak for yourself) babble, babble. A man from Memtek (manufacturers of Memorex) told me today that with the assistance of the fabulous and much admired Dolby C, this new Supertape can take 215 nano weber peaks (+13dB ref 185) without distortion, giving a usable 80dB dynamic range. This assumes that the heads on your machine won't distort first, and that you know what all those numbers mean. If you don't, suffice to say it's impressive. A C90 CDX II will cost you £4.14, but there are also less expensive formulations going down the range. Go on, give your Portastudio a treat.

The Channels of Power

Dynamix have released a new stereo power mixer, the PM 12G, for PA applications with 12 input channels, balanced mike inputs on XLRs with 48v phantom powering, three-band fixed eq, one pre-fade auxiliary send, an internal spring reverb, twin VU meters, two channel nine-band graphic equaliser and 300 watts per side into 4 ohms. Price £756.09. From the same company comes a new professional mixer, the Series 4000 with a maximum configuration of 32:16:2. Features include phantom powering, three-band eq with sweepable mid with 60/120Hz shelving, insert point and LED bargraph metering.

Blue Suede Guitars

In addition to the Tokai range, Blue Suede Music Products will now be handling guitars from Fernandez — best known for their high quality vintage copies, and also from the American company, Guild — famous for being themselves. This newly set up division will also be handling a range of hand built instruments from Japanese manufacturer Atlansia and a range of amplifiers from Sundown Technology US. Sundown was formed by Dennis Krager after he broke away from Mesa Boogie to make what he considers to be a superior product. For further details contact Blue Suede Music Products on (Contact Details). Ask for Adrian Elderkin.

Meet The New Boss

We've just heard news of some soon to be released products from Roland/Boss: JC-55 Jazz Chorus guitar amp: the eleventh in the Jazz Chorus series, this has a pair of 8" speakers powered independently by a pair of 25 watt amplifiers to give that deep swirling chorus effect. It's also got reverb and distortion and a price of £399. Then there's DAC-15B bass guitar amp — 15 watts, 1x25cm speaker, single input with gain and volume controls, three-band eq with sweepable mid. RRP £199. For the pro with aspirations towards the living room there's the HS-80 Synth Plus, which is basically a home use Juno-2 with in-built speakers for £975. Last but not least, although it is actually the smallest, there's the RPS-10 Digital Pitch Shifter/Delay with a smooth +/- one octave pitch shift, max 800ms delay, reverse effect, 15kHz bandwidth, 90dB S/N and all for £199.

If You Want To Get Head Get Aligned

Concerned that your cassette machine isn't performing quite as well as it might? Few people spend much time ensuring that their machine is properly aligned because it's such a hassle. But with this new tape from Robtek you can simply and quickly check the azimuth of your heads. The Audio Enhancement System, as they are rather pretentiously calling it, consists of a head cleaning cassette plus a second cassette with high frequency test tones on it. All you do is play the tape and adjust the azimuth screw (once you've found it) to get the highest volume. They even give you a little screwdriver, and all for £9.95. Assuming they've taken the trouble to record the test tapes accurately, it should be well worth a tenner.

Bass In A Box

From JHS, home of the Rock Box, comes the Bass Box. This diminutive metal box offers stereo chorus, frequency contoured compression, limiting of high frequency peaks, bright, mid and fat eq plus distortion all for a mere £189. The original Rock Box has also been improved: the Mark II features pre gain and compression threshold controls plus a footswitch socket. The price, however, stays the same at £149.

KY — The Microphone

To their already extensive range of microphones, TOA have added a very upmarket condenser called the KY. It's a modular design offering a range of three types of capsule for instrument and male/female vocal applications. Its very thin gold vaporised diaphragm gives it a wide frequency response and its built-in arm and compact size makes it ideal for use where space is tight. No, it hasn't got anything to do with the famous lubricant. The RRP will be around £360.

Matters of Courses

Gateway School of Music and Technology, that South London centre for erudite musicians, is now offering three new courses.

1: Fairlight programmers course — a four day, in depth look at the Fairlight Mark2 MIDI X, the first day of which can be taken on its own as a general introduction. The course will be taught by top programmer Poli Palmer.

2: One Day MIDI Orientation — all you need to know as a working musician using MIDI.

3: One Day Multitrack Course — a series of six one day courses based on the existing Multitrack Primary Course. Each day can be taken separately as and when you can afford it, over any period of time. For further information on the above, call Gateway on (Contact Details).

Extra Sensory Rhinos

Rhino Distribution are to be distributing a new range of guitars from ESP. They fall underfour main headings; the 400 series vintage replicas, the 600 series ESP versions of well known designs, 'Metal' for Heavy Rock merchants (all pearl finishes!) and the 'Handmade' series — high quality instruments with a clear finish. For further information contact Rob Grant or Ron Maskell on (Contact Details).

DX Takeover Disclosure

As of May the first responsibility for the running of the highly successful DX Owners' Club will be wrested from the overworked shoulders of originator Tony Wride and dropped firmly upon those of Martin Tennant, Yamaha's Hi-Tech Information manager. The name will be changed from DX Owners' to X-range Owners' to reflect the wider range of products the club now supports. For further details please contact Martin Tennant, The Yamaha X-Series Owners' Club, (Contact Details).

A Guitarist's Best Friend

The Aria Pro II range was once a source of extreme embarrassment to me, I went round calling them ProIIs for ages before realising my mistake — jolly uncomfortable. The Diamond Series holds no such traps. It consists of the JX Custom and JX Plus six strings and the JPJ-2 and JPJ-3 basses. Both guitars feature the ACT3 locking tremolo system and are available in black, white and Candy Apple Red. The JX Custom features two humbucker pickups with a three-way selector switch, whilst the JX Plus has two single coils and a humbucker in the bridge position with a five-way selector switch. Both guitars have volume and tone controls. Prices: JX Custom £319; JX Plus £399. The new basses are available in the same three colours with a 22 fret bolt on neck. The JPJ-2 features a P Bass and Jazz Bass-type pickup with a volume for each and a master tone giving a wide variety of pickup selection tone colour. The JPJ-3 features two P Bass type pickups mounted diagonally and a single Jazz Bass type pickup. There are two volume controls and a tone control, and pickup selection is via a new balance pot which controls the output of each of the three pickups. Prices: JPJ-2 £319; JPJ-3 £339.

MIDI Manipulation

Seiko have invaded the MIDI market with a range of MIDI data processing equipment plus a very affordable sequencer, the MR1000. It requires real-time programming, takes about 5,000 notes (with full touch, modulation and pitch bend information) with a 32kbyte memory and allows memory dump to cassette tape for storage. More details are not available at present but there appear to be no editing facilities and no autocorrection of timing. Multipart arrangements can be built up by overdubbing (as if with a two-track tape machine) and each part can be assigned to a different MIDI channel and thus any number of instruments can be included in an arrangement. All this for £149.95. In addition to the sequencer Seiko have also released a series of MIDI information manipulators to filter, mix, switch and otherwise control a MIDI system. There's also a fibre optic cable available that allows MIDI information to be sent over any distance. At each end there is a DIN plug attached to a small black box which is an analogue to optical converter. A 20m lead will cost somewhere in the region of £50-£60.

Gallien-Krueger In Blighty

On May 1st Allbang and Strummit took on the exclusive UK distribution of Gallien-Krueger amplification. Now you can join the ranks of performers such as Bruce Springsteen, Dan Fogleberg and Joe Walsh without having to go to America to do it. Many complimentary things have been written and said about these amps but one comment stands out from the rest as definitive: "Holy Toledo, what a smoker", Elliot Randall, Ex Steely Dan. For further details of when and where call Jon Gold on (Contact Details).

MIDI For Old Synths

From the people who brought you the Umi sequencer package for the BBC computer, U-Music, comes the Umi converter.

For £245 this box brings MIDI contralto your old analogue synths: MIDI to CV, Gate and VCA/VCF. Not only will it allow you to control note-on and note-off but also, by connecting the MIDI touch information to the VCA or VCF inputs on your synth, you can also have touch sensitivity. No longer will your old Mini Moog, etc, be left out in the cold. What a fab device.