Gibson + Moog = RD

The first public metaphysical meeting of Orville Gibson and Robert Moog took place at London's Horseshoe Hotel in late March, when the wraps were taken off the new Gibson RD Series guitars, and Norlin's axe-wielding genius/demonstrator Dave Roberts put the new beasties through their not inconsiderable paces.

A selection of Gibson fanciers braved the rainy London night to watch Dave describe and demonstrate the five newies — the RD Artist, and Standard guitars, plus the RD Artist and Standard basses. Students of the extraordinary would do well to check our Dave Blake's review of the RD Artist guitar on p75 of this issue. Moog have joined forces with Gibson to provide the active electronics section in the back of the RD Custom and Artist guitars and in the Artist bass - on the Artist guitar and bass there is also a Compression/Expansion facility. All this in a vaguely Firebird-shaped guitar that looks likely to set a few bands alight - and lighten a few pockets. Prices range from £434.67 to £650.67.

International Music Show in Milan

The 12th Salone Internazionale Della Musica (SIM) will be held this year at the Milan Fair Ground from September 7 to 11. Eight hundred manufacturers from forty countries will attend, showing instruments and amplification, PA systems, hi-fi equipment, professional audio equipment and video systems.

SIM (the International Music Show) is quickly becoming one of the largest specialised fairs in Europe, and has been visited in past years by around 80,000 people annually. Further details: (Contact Details).

Ariel Snap Plugs

A new snap range of DIN loudspeaker plugs is available to the audio equipment industry from the Nottingham, England based Ariel Group. Silver-plated brass contacts are soldered to the lead over which is snapped together a polypropylene one-piece housing. Ariel claim this eliminates the tendency in standard plugs for the section housing the contacts to be pulled away from the main cover.

New Ev Monitors

Electro-voice have introduced two new floor monitors and two new stage speaker systems.

The new monitors are a three-way unit, the FM 12-3, and the FM 12-2, a two-way monitor. Both have the EVM 12L Low-frequency driver and T 35 tweeter with 'blowout protection' on the HF unit. The three-way unit has, in addition, a 6½in midrange unit. The FM 12-3 is capable of pushing out 116 dB SPL at a distance of 4ft., for 100W in, and has a frequency response of 80-16K Hz. (although they don't state how many dB down the unit is at these extremes). The spec for the FM 12-2 is pretty similar, but it is smaller and lighter than the three-way unit, and presumably not quite so effective in the MF region.

The two stage speaker systems are the S 15-3, a three-way system capable of 116 dB SPL, and the S 12-2 two-way unit. Both have a good wide dispersion for stage use, and the three-way system, like the monitor, features the new 6½in MF speaker, described as a 'vented midrange driver', designed to 'combine the brilliance of a horn with the warmness of a cone speaker'.

All four new models are capable of handling 100W 'shaped white noise' (whatever that means) for long periods and have an impressive black vinyl finish with aluminium trim. They may be mounted on Electro-Voice 480 stands for other monitoring and PA applications.

EV also produce a wide range of microphones and speakers for both PA and studio work.

Fender and Gibson Books

It's a good sign that some of the old "Fender and Gibson are best" mystique is slowly slipping away from the guitar and bass scene. Healthy, too, that people realise that a good guitar is a good guitar, whatever the transfer on the head says.

Fender and Gibson guitars didn't gain their elevated status for nothing, of course, and two excellent books which chart these makers' successes are The Gibson Guitar from 1950 by Ian C. Bishop, and The Fender Guitar by Ken Achard.

Ian Bishop's book was first published at the beginning of 1977 and is now in its third printing, covering every aspect of the Gibson guitar from Flying V's to Firebirds, SG's to serial numbers. The Fender Guitar is the more recent of the two books, but it too is in its third printing and traces the Fender story from the birth of Leo Fender, via the CBS takeover, to relatively recent events like the semiacoustic Starcaster.

The books retail for £2.95 each in Britain, but if you can't find them at your friendly local bookstore, then you can obtain them direct from Musical New Services, (Contact Details) at a cost of £3.10 each (inc. postage). Coming soon from Musical New Services is the second part of the Gibson book, with more on the rarer guitars and additional serial number information. This should be available around Autumn, and then towards Christmas we can expect The History Of The American Guitar by Ken Achard, documenting everything from Martin's arrival in New York, to the present crowded scene. Watch this space for further news.

Blow That Synth, Man

Synthesisers have always been the keyboard man's country. More recently, we've been getting the guitar synths and even drum synthesisers, but no-one would have imagined it would be possible to produce a machine for the horn player. After all, people thought, there are so many imprecise variables. How on earth could you produce a device that could cope with the subtleties of a brass instrument? Adding a synthesiser to a guitar is one thing: a pitch-to-voltage converter and a bit of switching and you're away. But even there you get problems. With an average note, full of harmonics, noise and general gutsiness, the simple P-to-V has a hard time deciding which note is which. And a wind instrument in the same position is a dead loss (unless you like the sound of a synth trying to work out whether it should be playing the fundamental or two octaves up).

At last, however, there's a brass instrument (nearly a soprano sax, in fact) that can interface directly with a synthesiser, bypassing the keyboard of course. Produced by Computone, Inc., Norwell Mass., and called the Lyricon Wind Synthesiser Driver (a mouthful and a half — let's just call it a Lyricon), this machine takes the three main factors that produce the sound in a wind instrument: wind pressure, lip motion and finger position, and turns them into synthesiser-compatible control voltages. The 'business end' of the device is shaped like a soprano sax, with identical fingering. This unit is coupled by a thin cable to a control box which provides the signal processing and parameter-adjustment, and doubles as a sturdy carrying case. The box modifies the control functions and offers an output signal compatible with most conventional keyboard machines, supplying trigger, envelope and pitch information.

The remarkable thing about the device is that it is capable of producing effects that would be impossible to achieve with a conventional synthesiser, yet with none of the hassles associated with the pitch-to-voltage-only approach to instrument/synthesiser hookups, if you'll pardon the expression.

The machine has been around for some time now in prototype form: Tom Scott uses one very effectively, for instance, but now it is generally available. The complete package (body, case/processor) weighs only 14 lbs., and will no doubt find its place in the instrument repertoire of many musicians. No doubt the day will soon come when every member of the band can have their own electronic box of tricks, but the philosophy involved there is another story entirely.