One Two's cherished Shredder goes widescreen this month with a seven-page report from February's all-important Frankfurt trade show of musical instruments. Here is all the hot news of the gadgetry destined to make your musical year; plus a brace of interviews with specially selected industry personnel, Shredder's eyes and ears kindly loaned by Paul Colbert and Tony Bacon.

What can you do with a 5mm-thick, plastic water container? Make a portable amplifier out of it, dummy. You do if you're M. Schneider of Munich who procreated the 30W MS combo that can run from a 15V internal battery supply, an external main adaptor, a car battery and definitely not ten litres of H20. It's a real water cannister with the screw cap still in place, and the electronics and 50W Celestion speaker fitted from the Front. Controls are simple — gain, treble, bass and master volume — and the sound was okay until MS took it out of the corner where it had been propped, so depriving it of a natural bass chamber. Went a bit thin, then, and so did the wallet when confronted with the price (550 DM, about £160).

Sound Sampling for £2,000 (the Ensoniq), sound sampling for £1000 (the Akai), sound sampling for £49.95... yup. Admittedly you do need a Commodore 64, and the quality is far from professional — top whack of 4 or 5kHz, if you're lucky — but Music Sales' Sampler programme does allow you to record acoustic sounds, loop them, feed them backwards or forwards, and play them across a ten-octave range from a MIDI keyboard (mono only). In fact the Sampler can store up to four shorter samples (reportedly of a second each, but we had our doubts), and fire them off from the Q, W, E, R, keys of the Commodore, sequenced drum patterns being the idea, here.

The same software can act as an echo unit or a harmoniser, all operating from a mike input. Still some work to do yet, they say, but the final cassette loading programme should also be able to supply a crude, on-screen analysis of the sampled waveform and let you tweak the harmonics with a joystick. Again, it's NOT professional, but at £49.95 it must be the world's most irresistible programme for any musical Commodore owner. Music Sales were also showing the Pro Synth cassette, which supplies greater control over the Commodore's onboard sounds (transforming them from 'yauch' to merely 'hmmm'), and manages some tracked up mono sequencing... £9.99. Shown, too, was the SFX Composer, written for the BBC-B, and which lets you write three-part score arrangements on the screen.

Premier had a, er, battery of new products, including a new line of kits called the Projector series. These come in basic five-, six-, seven-, eight- or nine-piece kits, or as individual drums, from a 6x6 concert tom to a 24x6 power bass drum. There was also a new range of stands, featuring total compatibility of bits and pieces so you can swap stuff around more easily, and memory locks for height and angle settings, called ProLock. There were some natty looking grey cases, too, which we hadn't seen before, all fibre and protective and that. And not an electronic drum in sight, which definitely made the Premier stand a rarity.

Casio's CZ1000 is essentially a full-sized keyboard version of the CZ101 (reviewed January issue), will sell for about £545, and should further the company's attempts to get into a more serious keyboard market. There were still plenty of new keyboards in the more gimmicky area — the MT85 with guide lights to teach you to play tunes from a ROM pack (£275), the MT36 six-preset, four-rhythm machine (£95), the MT100 update of the MT68 with added graphic eq (£155), and the MT210 with PCM drum sounds (£225). There was also a rather peculiar device called the CK500, with keyboard, radio, two cassette decks, enabling you to record by bouncing between the two, with a price tag of £345. We also caught sight of a couple of mock-ups of models-to-come: the SZ1 four-channel sequencer, with real- or step-time programming, editing, copy, repeat, insert and delete functions, voice number and key-touch data in memory for each of the four channels, a RAM cartridge for on-board storage, and a possible arrival date of August. The other box hidden away was the CZ5000, a five-octave version of the 1000 with a built-in eight-channel sequencer, the CZ Series now-familiar phase distortion system, and an ETA of June or July.

Aria came up with a choice of two programmable effects units: one board with built-in distortion, compression, delay, chorus, and one external in/out; the other board simply has five in/outs with which to use the effects of your choice. Each enables you to pre-program three combinations of effects by a series of on/off switches for the various built-in or remote effects — the effects-less board is the APB5, the one with built-in noises is the APE1.

Aria also had a new Digital Delay pedal, the DDX10, with four delay ranges covering 4mS to 1024mS, and a latched/unlatched effect to hold on to the delayed signal while the pedal is depressed, or to recall a memorised delayed signal by tapping the pedal.

They also had a batch of new guitars, though there was nothing to get overly excited about here, except perhaps the RS Inazuma III (that's correct). Once you've got over the name, you'll notice that it has a new wang bar, the ACT3 tremolo, which we will doubtless be leaning on in due course.

Good old Ted, maker of the Digisound one-sound digital units, showed a bigger device this year called The Winner. It's claimed to be a sampler, EPROM programmer, blower and copier, and boasts MIDI and serial interfaces for computers. On the face of it, the Winner (priced at around £730, Ted suggests) seems to have the necessary features and a brace of useful interfaces. Play it with a keyboard as a sampler, perhaps, or bash off some chips for your Linn or Drumulator. Or use your home computer to store sampled sounds on to disc. I suppose we ought to say this could be a winner, but we'll avoid the temptation.

Shadow had an interesting idea, a replacement bridge for Jazz and Precision-type basses with a built-in pickup, and an attached pre-amp which plugs into the nearby jack socket. The pre-amp then gives adjustment over the volume and tone of the rather pleasant high-end sounds you can drag from the bridge pick-up (each new saddle has a built-in ceramic pickup) and a flickswitch to select on-board pickups only, bridge pickup only, or all your pickups combined. Could be handy for bringing out those pulls, snaps and harmonics.

Lexicon's PCM60 digital reverb was shown at Frankfurt for the first time (by the German distributor), although the unit has been available in very limited numbers in the UK since the end of last year. It's essentially a scaled-down version of the well-known top-of-the-line Lexicon reverbs that adorn many an expensive recording — at £1635 it's still not cheap, but if you want that Lexicon reverb sound, this is the place to start. It gives you just that — the reverb capability, without the 224 or 200 (£12,500 and £4,700 respectively) units' ability for extensive programming and variation. You pays a lot of money, you takes your choice. (UK distributor: SSE, (Contact Details).)

The computer is your friend, and now you can sing to it. Well, with it, actually, if you're the owner of a Fairlight Voice Tracker. The slim, square, self-contained unit takes a microphone input, analyses the pitch, tone and amplitude of your voice (or any other mono sound source), and knocks up some suitable MIDI information that can be used to control a synth. Fairlight had the voice tracker playing a DX7. It's not a vocoder, but does for the voice what a pitch-to-voltage converter does for a guitar synth, roughly. The tracker can display the timbre and pitch detail of your voice on a VDU screen, and will encourage the connected synth to follow exactly what you're singing, or quantise it to convenient semitones for those of us without a school choir upbringing. Not entirely sure how many people want to sing a glockenspiel, but the tracker is certainly fast. It has your voice checked, cleared and operating the synth within 9ms of receiving the input.

The Nobby Meidel bass doesn't feature lumpy extrusions, as the name might suggest, but does a Steinberger-in-wood act, fixing a headless (fairly broad) neck to a flared oblong body of palisander. Looks rather sensual, in fact, with attractive sandwiches of dark, medium and light timber, generally soaked in gold from the Schaller bridge, through to the long, gently-curved metal arm that leans out from the back of the body. This becomes the pivot point if you want to hang the Nobby from one end of a strap around your neck (another teaching of Steinberger's).

A P and J type teaming of EMG pickups keep the electronics simple, and the only clutter-factor spoiling the image is the fixing of small machine heads at the bass of the body. These are widely separated along the edge, causing the strings to fan out at sharp and possibly wearing angles to reach their destinations.

Demonstrations were impressive, mainly thanks to the band of two bass players, a drummer, and a rack of chorus units and Kudos amps and speakers. A big sound with one of the bassists taking lead lines using a capo. Occasionally at Frankfurt equipment manufacturers do get together to share stand space and cooperate in demonstrations, and this was an example where the collaboration functioned supremely. The extraordinary range of low thudding bass and bright top lines was a credit to the Nobby and the small-speakered Kudos system.

We took our eyes and ears to the Sequential Circuits stand. Our eyes noticed that there was a big poster on the wall for their new drum machine, called TOM. As you might expect. Opposite was the Casio stand, with a list of demo times for the curious, finishing up by stating: "15.30 — WITH JERRY". We came back at 3.30 expecting a big jam session by Tom & Jerry, but no such luck.

Meanwhile, our ears heard someone on the S-C stand say, "We were going to have a sampling keyboard here at Frankfurt but it was postponed when we heard about the Ensoniq Mirage. We should have it ready for the London shows in August." We look forward to sampling it.

The first copy we've seen of Brian May's homemade guitar was to be found on the Guild stand, and it turns out that Brian has been involved with the designing and "upgrading" of the instrument to result in the Guild Brian May model. Brian has apparently been a visitor to the Guild factory in New Jersey to oversee design and prototype working, collaborating with the makers for about a year prior to the model's first European showing at Frankfurt. It features the odd shape and control configuration of Brian's original guitar, which he made himself and still uses with Queen: six on/off flickswitches give pickup on/off and phase in/out. An improvement on the original (presumably) is the Guild's Kahler tremolo arm and locking nut, but Guild admitted they didn't use the old sideboard of the original but "only top quality mahogany". The example at the show was numbered BHM146 on the back of the headstock, and no sixpences were in evidence. An ironic note is that this American guitar company which has chosen to develop the design of a distinctive British guitarist's instrument is currently without a distributor in the UK. In the meantime you might try writing to Guild Guitars at (Contact Details).

JHS of Leeds have picked up UK distribution of a couple of 4-track cassette machines at either end of the market, both of which were on show for the first time at Frankfurt. At the bottom end is the Teczon Dub Multi 4x4, rather a mouthful for a simple multitracker slotting in somewhere between the X15 and the Porta One, although it will sell at about £400. The four mixer channels feature bass and treble, output level, pan, track select, input select, record ready, and input level pot (not fader), and there's also a simple master double-fader and an own-brand noise reduction facility. At the other end is the £1,300 Audio-Technica AT-RMX64 4-track cassette recorder with integral six-channel mixer. Initial impression was of a large, well-appointed system with facilities for phantom power on mike inputs, good level and overload displays, extensive interfacing, Dolby B and C, and two tape speeds. It seems to be the most comprehensive unit yet to be based around a standard cassette, and has a price to match. We'll be listening...

Idle chat with Bob Wilson, boss-like person of the new Bandive-Atlantex conglomerate, revealed that this particular guitar collector is very keen to own a Fender Starcaster. This is generally regarded as the worst guitar ever made — just to give you an idea of its appallingness, this 1978 guitar is a semi-acoustic with a Strat-shaped head-stock and, reputedly, is impossible to keep in tune. Sounds nice, huh? Worse thing is, Mr Wilson wants one in green. Oh no, there's something even worse. He's prepared to pay money for it. If you have got such a thing (which we sincerely doubt) here's your chance to recoup some losses. Write to the patently mad Bob c/o One Two. We'll believe it when we see it.

A guitar based on Stonehenge... how does that grab you, children of the cosmos? No, it doesn't look like a 30-foot pillar of stone, it's the pickups that are wound to correspond to the magnetic flux that, apparently, inhabits the Druid's equivalent of the Marquee. Remarkably it's made by an Italian, Alfredo Bugari, who has surrounded the pickups with metal inserts to match the 'henge layout.

Less cosmic but more eyecatching is Alfredo's idea for a tubular guitar — a tube of special brass alloy is bent into a triangle, parts of the area within the frame are filled by fir-wood panels to hold the pickups, and the bridge is welded to another brass cross-strut. The construction is painted matt black and can, at times, resemble a Habitat chair, but the maple neck is 'human' enough.

It's unsettling to be able to see a sizeable strip of your right hip through your guitar, and I can't say the Bugari was excessively comfortable, but it looked good.

Hard, now, to pin down any special trend on guitar shapes, but there were more than a few lopsided Flying Vs dangling from their pegs. Kawai unveiled the KR series with Floyd Rose trems. One version had a partially developed right-hand leg to its V, and the other suffered a complete amputation. Little to commend them, other than their shape, which had the unfortunate side effect of making them very head heavy, but the black trems were nice.

Of the scores of electronic drum kits scattered about, DDrums were among the most impressive — and expensive. Their kit of circular pads (what a concept!!) and a rack of digital sound modules seemed most effective at exceptional, acoustic drum samples. DDrum argue that the the bomf/crack of synth drums will rapidly fall from favour due to over-exposure, but the acoustic drum will always have a home. Their pads come with true drum skins (Remo Weather King Ambassador Batters for feel, and they're offering a library of sound cartridges — from Linn or Ludwig 22in bass drums, through Tama 13in timbales, steel barrels, orchestral time to half a dozen snares. Personally, they're most pleased with their Sonor kit sample (switchable on the rack from ambient to non-ambient). Likely to become one of the more substantial names in electronic drumming.

Several new Westone models in six strings and basses, but to us the most eyecatching had something missing... paint. A single, gorgeous, birdseye maple body, stained a rich dark brown, stole the stand. More of this, please.

Ibanez have taken their MU multiple effects units to a logical conclusion with one racked box containing compression, distortion, chorus/flanging, and delay, all programmed for their strength and connection order using a 22 button keypad to the far right of the 19in unit. The DUE400 can memorise many different patches of effects and shift them around with a copy facility. As always, you're faced with the problem of 'liking' all the effects within the rack, but it's a powerful and time saving system; comes with a foot controller, too.

Akai steamed into the synth business after their slightly faltering start with the AX80 programmable, analogue poly last year. In '85, they've got a rackmounted, MIDI, six-voice polyphonic sampler planned to retail at £1,099. There's a dynamic sensitive, two-oscillator, expander module for the same price (the VX90), at £769, touch-sensitive master keyboard (the MX76), and an update on the AX80 called the AX90 (£2,190) though what the updates may be nobody's sure as the front panel and layout are virtually identical.

On the sequencing side, Akai have gone heavily into mass memory and computing power. At the heart is the CPZ1000 acting as a MIDI 'communications centre', running connected synths from two, on-board 3.5in micro-floppy disc drives. The CPZ can be linked with the RZ1000 which turns it into a live keyboard recorder, or the EZ1000 which, with its QWERTY keyboard and additional note/rest keys, converts it to an editor and music composer. Either combination with the CPZ sets you back £3,299. Tacked on the end are the ME10D, ME15F and ME20A — MIDI-based delay, auto fade and arpeggiator units, that, appear to work by interrupting, delaying and repeating the MIDI data before it reaches the keyboard, so preventing any degradation in signal.

But the star is the S612 sampler which offers 12-bit sampling, looping and editing of start and stop points via two horizontal sliders. A seven-segment LED ladder shows recording strength, you can overdub to construct sounds and treat them with an in-built LFO, filter and decay section. Sound quality was hard to judge in the clamour of Frankfurt, but polyphonic sampling at this price must set Akai up as potentially one of the most important new synthesiser forces in '85.

If there was one instrument at the show which kept all the aisles buzzing it was the Ensoniq Mirage from the Ensoniq Corp of Pennsylvania. Why? Can't have been the five octave, touch sensitive keyboard, nor the plain black control panel with it's single cluster of parameter programming buttons.

Probably because, in crude parlance, it's an Emulator for under £2,000.

For the price, the facilities are little snort of staggering. For a judgment on sound quality... many were the dropped jaws in Germany, but the Ensoniq was being demo-ed in the middle of a crowded and noisy stand with a small monitoring system. We'll reserve judgment for a later and detailed appreciation.

But for the moment, swim in the spec: eight note polyphonic sampling where each note can carry a different sound; analogue filters and envelope generators for treatment; polyphonic/polytimbral sequencer (333 notes expandable to 1333) recording key velocity pitch bend, modulation and sustain pedal info; 16 multiplexed digital oscillators allowing detuning for chorus effects; 16 different wave-samples across the keyboard (so the tone changes of acoustic instruments can be reproduced over the whole range from many independent samples); multiple wave-samples per voice (for two layered samples, the balance determined by the key velocity); split keyboard with up to two seconds of sampling per half at full bandwidth; variable input sampling rate from 33KHz to 8KHz to get the best of sample time versus frequency; full MIDI; pitch and modulation wheels; simple default sampling mode for quick results... the list goes on forever.

Apart from the control pad and list of parameters, the Ensoniq's only other extrusion is a 3.5in micro-floppy disc drive at the front of the keys. Each 400Kbyte disc can take three full-keyboard sounds of 16 wavesamples per sound; four programmes per keyboard half; eight sequences of 333 notes, and up to 48 sound samples and 24 treatment programmes (filter, modulation, etc), depending on the sample size.

Technically, however, the most interesting lines in the spec sheet are those that read 'PCM Data Encoding, 8-bit floating point conversion for 16-bit (90dB) dynamic range; 29.4KHz output sample rate (output NYquist response to 14.7KHz).' So, PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) is the less sophisticated (and less expensive) form of sampling that appears on many drum machines and certain pre-set sampled keyboards from Japan. It's not the Emulator's more detailed method so there's still a LOT in the fight, yet.

In America the black, slim Ensoniq sells for $1,700. Distribution in this country has already been secured by SYCO, but they aren't the only firm in the frame, as our colonial cousins might say. British price?? Estimates ranged everywhere from £1,600 to £2,000, and the final figure will obviously rely heavily on the bout between dollar and sterling.

The reputation of 'sleeping giant' still stings Fender and these days they take delight in surprising the world and its truss rod. At Frankfurt they unleashed three entirely new trem systems (with touches that show real understanding of musicians), plus weird, completely un-Fender-like guitar shapes and several things done with humbuckers that would horrify traditionalists.

Top of the trems is the free-floating System III with fine tuners. A trio of clever tricks here — a nut lock that unlatches with one movement to allow fast string replacement, an arm that locks the bridge into non-trem mode when it's swung downwards, and all the required allen wrenches for height, intonation adjustment, etc, are hidden within the tremolo arm itself. Systems II and I are less elaborate versions. Patents pending in several areas.

Fender had 20 new guitars at the show (look out for an interview with designer Dan Smith elsewhere in votre Un Deux). All now have 22 frets. Some have been standardised — the basic £370 Strat is the 27-4300 with the return of the jack ferrule and the simplest System I trem. Some have been popularised — the 27-4400 Contemporary Start with one humbucker and volume control (à la Van Halen), or the 27-5700 with two single coils and one humbucker; or the recreated, bound, '62 Custom Tele (£368). Some have been... er... experimented with — the new, angular Katanas appearing in Fender and Squier versions, both dubbed 'the HM series', same 12in neck radius, but the pictures speak better than the typewriter. Some have been combined — the £389 Jazz Bass special with P and J pickups, as revealed in last month's Shredder. And some have been Squiered versions of the Van Halen, one humbucker Strat, at £222 now the cheapest in the range; popular four-bolt neck jobs; popular Tele's with 7.25in neck radii and short scale 32in examples of the Precision.

And today they ALL come from Japan, but we'll let Dan Smith explain that. Really DID like that tremolo arm with all the wrench bits inside. Could even fit it into a slot at the base of the body, like a Morris starting handle, and crank up the height of the bridge.

Somebody had to do it, and Musiflex have. Moulded XLR plugs, that's what. XLRs not only cost an arm and a couple of other limbs, they are also bastards to solder and generally affix. There's no good news on the soldering front (you really will have to go on buying made-up leads), but Musiflex have at least tried to make the big XLR at a smaller price. Moulding them in plastic, just like all those jack plugs and DIN plugs you've got all over the place, makes them so much cheaper than the usual metal types. Even Shure have enquired about buying the plastic ones to give away with their mikes. Still Musiflex wouldn't tell us just how cheap, but we'll keep asking them and let you know.

The Linn 9000, reviewed last month, was Linn's big news at Frankfurt, but they also had a couple of side items to tell us about. First they let on to us just what the Top Ten selling chips for the Linn were over the last few months. Here goes, chip bags: 1 Toms 7; 2 Toms 8; 3 Snare 13; 4 Clave (trigger); 5 Bass drum 6; 6 Snare 11; 7 Snare 12; 8 Bass guitar 1; 9 Handclaps 3; 10 Silent Chip (allows tuning in conjunction with chip in dual toms or congas socket). Now wasn't that fun? You want to know the most popular set, too? Oh, OK. It's the Rock Chips of course, meaning Bass 11, Snare 23 and Toms 17. Now you can go and buy up all the other chips to make sure you sound different — for a month, at least. And if you really love Linn drums, one record that might break the habit is Mikel Rouse's "Quorum" LP on Club Soda Music. This is, we are told (by Linn, natch), the first two parts of Mikel's piece for solo Linn Drum. Rush out to a store near you now!

Pearl have patents pending on their Super Gripper lug. The hoop retaining-bolt screws into a nut with an EVA plastic tubing that grips the rod and prevents loosening. The lug itself can be clipped open to release this barrel-shaped nut so the hoop and head can be removed after only a few quick turns of the tension rods. No springs or washers to drop out, either.

Extra software from Siel including a Multitrack composer, step written, from a Commodore 64 keyboard storing more than 9000 notes and handling six voice channels. Also a 16-track, live, poly sequencer (9000 MIDI events equals up to 4500 notes), an editor for the Expander module, a Data Base synthesiser (storing 250 sound programs for MIDI synths), and a delay program for producing echo effects by manipulating, delaying and repeating MIDI information before it reaches the synth.

If you happen to be in New York towards the end of November it might be a wise move to take in the New York International Music & Sound Expo, which promises to be a wider ranging event than last year's largely guitar-shaped show. The organisers reckon it will cover "the whole incredible world of music and sound today" (they are American), and they suggest that the venue, the New York Coliseum, is "the leading showcase for great public expositions" (ditto). More of this sort of thing from NYIMSE, (Contact Details). Dates are 29 November to 1 December 1985.

Trace Elliot had a new amp and a couple of speakers to show people wandering by. The amp is the AH150, available with either TE's GP7 or GP11 preamp, the latter a little more sophisticated than the 7 with wider graphic, switchable eq and "noise reduction", and more comprehensive interface sockets. TE reckon the 150's output of (guess) 150 watts will suit studio players or those not requiring too high a stage level. However, the two most interesting items were the programmable graphic, which Shredder looked at last month, and a prototype system for electronic drum amplification. The power amp in this bi-amped two-way system was similar to that in the AH350X, but TE have designed the system for peak power rather than RMS levels, building the power supply to cope with the massive peaks that electronic percussion throws out and that lesser systems are often unable to cope with. The system can shove out 700 watts of power, and could well match TE's existing reputation in the bass field with an equally quality-conscious sound for the electronic drummer.

The Korg DW-6000 you already know about since you doubtless memorised every word of the review on pages 16 and 17.

They were demonstrating a small, portable micro with a pop-up LCD screen, and bearing a label marked MC4000. The computer looked (very) much like an Epson with a sticker, but more intriguing was the low plinth of electronics on which it was sitting. This module was the MU5000 (Music Unit) and is pure Korg — a 16-voice synth with digital voices using something they've dubbed 'Non-Linear Technology'.

Loaded in the MC4000 was a composition programme filling the screen with small and frankly jumbled figures. The sounds were obviously streets ahead of the usual computer-integral noises (the MU can programme and store 64 patches), but since the only demos were over headphones, it was hard to tell how far advanced Korg's NLT system may be. The unit has MIDI and RS232 sockets, and can be partnered by a mini disc drive.

In the MR-16 Korg had done something strange with the box that usually holds an EX800 expander. The MR is a MIDI Rhythm Sound Unit — 19 different drum and percussion sounds (PCM recorded), that rely on an external sequencer to arrange them into recognisable drum patterns. Each sound is adjustable for volume and pan position in the stereo output, but there are 16 individual outs for the most important sounds so you can EQ and mix them separately.

Though the MIDI structure will allow you to play each drum sound from a keyboard (the front panel boasts an instrument map to show which keys will elicit the desired noise), it looks tailor-made for computer-equipped musicians who already have the sequencing power to produce drum patterns, chains and songs.

Now a set of bass pedals with MIDI. The MPK-130 has 13 keys, is switchable in range over three octaves and can be played polyphonically (by a football team, perhaps) or monophonically with high note priority.

The SDD-2000 is a 'sampling digital delay' — in short a 64-memory echo with maximum delay time of 4.368 seconds whose recordings can be read out at different pitches via a MIDI keyboard. Monophonic, if you were wondering, and sequencable by MIDI.

Did like the DT-1 digital tuner which has one of the sweetest LED displays on God's Good Earth. The complaint often raised about tuners is that meters with needles are much better than a few lights because you can gauge degrees of tuning, instead of wondering where the pitch falls between two indecisive, flickering bulbs. Korg have got round this by having dozens of tiny LEDs crammed close together giving plenty of detail.

And we always thought table monitors were the creepy prefects who stopped you pouring salt into your neighbour's dinner, but no, they're small-speakered, self-powered units in fashionably extruded blue and grey plastic casings. The Korg TMs come in 3W, 30W and 75W versions, and at least they don't give you detentions.


Successive synthesiser output from Siel in the shape of an expander (close in price and appearance to the Korg EX800, but with a few more facilities). The Expander 80 has eight voices (four-on-four in double mode), 50 internal memories (only ten editable) with RAM pack option for a further 100. It's dynamic, stereo, and has a two-track, real-time, poly sequencer storing up to 300 notes.

It's a flat black box, programmed by parameter control with a list of the synth sections in grey panels across the top, and a 0-9 keypad and LED display along the bottom. Interesting that Siel have moved to the ADBSSR envelope generators that appear on the Korg DW-6000 (pages 16/17). The initials stand for attack, decay, break point, slope, sustain, release and permit greater control over the 'centre' of the sound Envelope.

Sequential's improvements to the Six-Trak poly have resulted in the Multi-Trak with the main changes being on the sequencing and sound stacking sides. Synth spec stays roughly the same — one VCO for each of the six voices — but as well as piling six different patches onto one monophonic note, you can now put three sounds on two notes, and two on three. The poly sequencer is extended to four locations with a total memory space of 1600 notes. There's auto correction to five resolutions and sequences can be appended and chained for longer arrangements.

Velocity sensitivity makes an appearance, both on the keyboard and within the sequencer. Recommended retail (translated from the German value) works out around £1500.

When the Drum-Traks machine came up for its modernisation, it caught a re-baptism at the same time. The Tom is a $799 (£799??) machine with eight digitally-sampled sounds but, like the Drum-Traks, each is programmable for a different tuning within every pattern so vastly expanding the available tones. Rhythms can be tapped in real time, or step programmed; there are 99 programmes of 99 measures each making 99 songs (Tom has a 3000 note memory). The samples can be played backwards (more useful than you think, especially with the programmable tuning), but Sequential seem to be hanging their hopes on its 'Improv factor', otherwise known as the human touch. 'Improv' lets you write a series of fills which are automatically dropped into your song chains "to create minor variations in your drum patterns", and the 'Human Factor' will likewise insert small changes in the tuning and volume as the patterns chatter by. Sequential whispered a helpful aside that the MIDI on both new devices will be more amenable.