A personal report of the NAMM (National Association of Musical Merchandisers) Chicago trade fair from Bob Styles, manager of Argent's keyboard shop in London.

Everywhere you looked at NAMM there were synthesisers. Keyboard synths, guitar synths, even a wind synth from Steiner Parker. It was the biggest NAMM show so far, and Norlin matched this with a lavish whole floor display, including the new Multimoog and Polymoog Keyboard. This last item seems to be in response to the 'too expensive' label attached by many to the previous Polymoog Synthesiser, and features just 14 presets (without a filter section).

Just to run through the other new keyboards on show, ARP had their Quadra polyphonic synthesiser with programmer which didn't impress me greatly — it's a sort of cross between an Omni and an Odyssey, and I was told that the Quadra should be available in Britain by the end of '78, beginning of'79.

Roland unveiled their new polyphonic synth, the Jupiter 4, a 4-voice polyphonic device, to be joined shortly by the Jupiter 8 — surprisingly enough an 8-voice version. The Jupiters are programmable, and were backed up at the show by the new electric piano, the MP600, and a new string synth, the 'Paraphonic' RS505, similar to the ARP Omni.

Oberheim introduced their cassette interface, which works in conjunction with the OB 1 or the 4-voice, enabling you to dump programmes on to cassette. Helpinstill's new electric portable grand, the PG-21, looked interesting, especially since it has an 88-note span — a portable grand piano in fact, and naturally enough 'powered' by Helpinstill's famous piano pickups. Unlike Yamaha, which is its obvious comparison, the grand is finished in fibreglass, not wood, and therefore comes in ten colours — six plain and four glitter!

Sequential Circuits stole the show with their excellent Prophet 5 polyphonic synth, but prize for the most expensive synthesiser on show must go to Coupland's Digital Synthesiser, available for a mere $30000.

Yamaha's upgraded electric grand, the CP80B, with 88-note span, was on show; there are, however, no plans to bring it to the UK at present.

Other keyboards at the show that I think worth mentioning included Hammond's new B3-like organ, the B2000 (incidentally an electronic organ), Fender's suitcase Rhodes with a boosted 100 watts of internal power (previously only 50), and the new Minimoog with redesigned oscillators, giving more stable tuning, presumably without its previous inclination to drift.

Guitar synthesisers were, as I've said, much in evidence — Roland offered a new interface for their existing G700 set-up, and much interest was given to Holt Electro-Acoustic Research's Zetaphon (featuring a bridge mounted pickup with independent outputs for each string and claims of instantaneous and accurate tracking), and the latest 360 Systems equipment. Among Roland's many other new products on show were a new drum machine, various rack mounting equipment — power amps, graphics and so on — and some new effects pedals.

Some other things I saw that gained my interest included: Univox's new vocoder; Octave Electronics' sequencer, and their new device that looked like a ribbon controller or 'stick'-type device; some upgraded (power-boosted) amplification from Fender; various cordless guitar systems; Anvil and Roadrunner flight-cases (who did swift business with flightcase-type briefcases for $25 apiece); and a new range of signal processing equipment from Moog.

Lol Creme and Kevin Godley were present to show off their at-last-completed Giznio — it's being manufactured and marketed by Musitronics and should be generally available in October or November. Latest retail price being quoted is somewhere around the £150 mark — I wonder why it's all taken so long? Other musicians I noticed hovering were Herb Ellis and Ray Brown, session keyboardist Michael Bodicker, George Benson, Billy Cobham and Alphonso Johnson.

The fair also encompassed a range of peripheral stuff, from Silver Eagle straps (which are really good), to various sheet music publishers.

All in all an interesting and useful fair.