As we were ramming the final rubber letter into the John Bull stamp, a press release thudded through the letter box with details of the new Crumar Spirit.

The retail price of £449 breaks our barrier, but the spec makes intriguing reading.

There are two oscillators with a comprehensive mixing and LFO system including a ring mod. More unusually it has a pair of ADSR envelope generators — one for the VCA to shape the loudness of each note, the other for the filter to dictate its tone. All the other monos we've reviewed have shared a single ADSR for both jobs. Two permit greater versatility and subtlety within the sounds you create.

And the filter is split into twin sections — high pass and low pass — and it's switchable between 24dB/Octave and 12dB/Octave. Crumar seem to make a habit of having one more control than anyone else. The Spirit presents not two but three mod wheels — the first is for standard pitch bend, the second for mod section X which includes an arpeggiator, triangle, square, and random waveforms plus cross mod from Oscillator B, and something called Red Noise...? Number three preens itself under the name of Shaper Y... can't really see what it does but the info claims 'free/keyboard hold/reset/run/sawtooth/triangle/inverted sawtooth'.

Lots of knobs, then, but can't tell you what it sounds like yet. When we get hold of one for review, we'll let you know.