The must-have pedal of the moment is this 'ere Rat distortion unit. It's American-made, costs £70, and comes in a weighty square metal box. We had the Rat 2 for a while, which differs from the Rat 1 in that it has an on/off LED, and luminous lettering. It's a vicious little beast with sharp fuzzy teeth. Subtle it is not, and not overly brilliant for rhythm work. But wallop it up, and it wil do yer Marshall stack and yer Brian Maytone a treat. The filter control winds back the treble, rather than highlighting particular frequencies. One for stamping on in moments of high musical stress (and volume). Fumbs up.

Cough, ahem... and you may have seen a blank space where Ritchie Blackmore should have been on page 5 last month. This was due to emission and absorption transitions — the guilty printer has been made to listen to an endless loop of all the Deep Purple albums. We made two mistakes in the mass of information included in Sampler Survey (page 30): EMU's EMAX Keyboard is 12-bit, not 16; and the Akai X7000 takes 24 seconds to load its six sounds into memory, not 48. Lastly, we omitted the caption from the Calendar (page 47), which would have told you that the depicted six- and 12-string guitars were Polish (Poles apart, geddit?). Oh, and they sound dreadful. Looked good though, eh?

Rory Gallagher's signed LP goes to Jenny Allen of Henfield in Sussex. The answers we wanted were bluesman Billy Boy Arnold (not Cork, D. Leeke), and Rory's birthplace — Ballyshannon, County Donegal (not Billy Boy Arnold, D. Leeke).