In this issue you'll find an article on the Strawberry Cutting Room, and in some ways it's well overdue. As I've said elsewhere, cutting as an art is very much underestimated. In many ways it's one of the most important areas of record production, because it's about the last point in the chain where the recording engineer — and the musicians, who one hopes will also be able to be present at the 'cut' _ can make adjustments and alterations to the sound that the public will hear. And while you can turn down test-pressings for technical or creative reasons, tight release schedules and budgets being what they are, this often raises strong arguments. The cutting engineer is an artist just as much as any other person creatively involved in the making of a record, and the cut is very much a 'bringing together' of technical and creative skills: the recording engineer, producer and hopefully the artists should have prepared the master tape so that as little adjustment as possible is necessary at the lathe, but here also the cutting engineer can apply corrections in the form of such things as equalisation and limiting, to ensure that the best possible signal is transferred to disc: a not inconsiderable task. For this reason it's more than useful for the recording engineer — and everyone else — to be aware of the limitations that the tape-to-disc procedure can entail, for example by not expecting too much from the process. This means a number of things, including ensuring that such things as hard left or right panning of heavy bass signals, and overall levels, are kept to the optimum. Apart from reading about it, it's a good idea for both musicians and engineers alike to be acquainted with the techniques of cutting, ideally by ensuring that they get along to a cut, either their own or even someone else's. There's no substitute for first-hand experience, and this can usually be obtained for the price of a phone call.