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EtceteraArticle from Sound International, September 1978 |
Steve Gibbons is to be seen lately flaunting a nice new Peavey T-60 guitar, of the electric six-string variety. Those with good memories and a trade card may remember seeing a prototype of said axe at last year's London AMII fair — but since then nowt.
Steve has been lucky enough to secure the first production T-60 to reach European shores and seems suitably enthusiastic about the gift. 'The thing is,' he told us, 'I don't use guitar a great deal on stage, and I'm not that expert on the electronics or the ifs and buts of guitars. I know what a good one sounds like — to actually have a brand new guitar is quite something for me.'
He admits to not being a totally electric guitar oriented musician ('I've never written on electric guitar') — previously when a stage number has called for Steve to plug in it's been his old Gretsch semi or one of the band's spare Fenders. But he reckons the Peavey is much richer in sound: 'A lot more pokey as well, you know? The case is great too,' he grinned, 'one of the nicest cases I've ever seen.' Seems Steve's only criticism so far is the weight of the thing — 'It's ash. It's just as well I only play on a couple of numbers.'
Meanwhile, Peavey UK reckon they may have some T-60s available this side of Christmas, probably at less than £300 retail with case — spokesman Ken Achard described it as 'one of those limbo situations'. SI readers can expect a review when the limbo fades into reality.
Peavey Electronics, (Contact Details). Peavey Electronics (UK) Ltd, (Contact Details).
A recent report produced by a Working Party set up by the National Electronics Council recommends the introduction of a Citizens' Band in Britain. The report, endorsed by the NEC with the exception (naturally) of its Home Office and Post Office members, recommends discussion of British CB at the World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC) in 1979. The Home Office would rather nobody talked about it at all, let alone at WARC 79, when future radio band-planning will be worked out. But this new report from the exceptionally prestigious NEC, whose President is Lord Mountbatten and whose chairman is the Duke of Kent, will carry a lot of weight. Other NEC members include most of Britain's major electronics manufacturers, universities, and representatives from trade unions, the professional institutions, and broadcasting organisations, not to mention the National Economic Development Office. What this all means, in the words of a recent report in Wireless World, is 'that two members of the Royal Family as well as around ten of the highest-ranking members of our non-political civil service have aligned themselves in opposition to Government policy on radio communications.'
There is a very strong argument for UKCB presented in the report, which appears in the May-June issue of the National Electronics Review. It claims that frequencies above 200MHz are less suitable because of a declining range/power ratio, but no matter, a service in the range 100-200MHz is fine, although there may not be too much room. The idea is to avoid 27MHz not only because of potential interference, but also to stop the Japs flooding the market with cheap gear. Thus our equipment, when all the hurdles have been overcome, will cost about £100-£200 per set, whereas US gear is about £20-£100. But this will encourage British manufacturers to enter the market without fear of being wiped out. Export possibilities would be opened up by encouraging other countries to opt for VHF as well.
The mode of transmission recommended in the report is narrow-band frequency modulation (nbfm) as opposed to amplitude modulation (am) which is used in the States, but a rather weird appendix to the report suggests the use of single-sideband (ssb). Ssb in the manner described (with transmitter frequencies locked to Droitwich on 200KHz!) is a bit bizarre: it would require each radio to include a receiver for 200KHz, which is totally impractical. There is no need to make the specification for our CB service any more stringent than that applied to Private Mobile Radio (pmr) in Britain. The report suggests the allocation of a minimum of 50 channels, spaced 10-12.5KHz apart (pmr channel spacing is currently 12.5KHz), with a further expansion to 100 channels. The NEC rightly points out that 50 channels need occupy only 500KHz of radio space: very small compared with the total increase of allocations for all forms of radio that is being sought at WARC 79-70MHz.
The NEC report proposes a limit of 2-5W power output on mobiles, and less for hand-helds, all units being type-approved and possibly fitted with a unique automatic identification signal to minimise illicit use, as already suggested by Britain's CB Association.
All in all, the report presents a serious challenge to the official view that CB is a Bad Thing. Police chiefs have been warned by the HO to deny that CB is a good idea; the HO are worried that British police will begin to share the respect held for Citizens' Band by their US counterparts. Recent exchanges in the House of Lords, in which one Member was quoted as being severely concerned about the possibility of a whole army of people all able to communicate easily with each other, seem to indicate this 'official view' — that freedom of speech is a right which They would rather like to see disappear, particularly in the field of communications, and, of course, as applied to journalists like Aubrey and Campbell.
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