Very quiet, have Linn been, with good reason. They've been conserving their energy for the Linn 9000 — 'a MIDI compatible keyboard recorder and digital drum machine'. The 9000 can run up to 16 separate MIDI keyboards (with a maximum of 32 tracks) and can store performance information such as dynamics, pitch bend, modulation and patch change. The drum section has been upgraded to include front panel velocity sensitive pads (for the hitting of), programmable hi-hat decay, built-in mixer with a slider for each drum, repeat functions for quick writing of rolls, and several other bits. The 9000's been laid out to resemble a multitrack tape machine as closely as possible. The price resembles the figure £4,000.

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LBC listened to 500 tapes in their Young London Band Of '84 and met some resistance. Impressed, they handed over a Casio CT-7000, Fostex X-15, AKG mike, Gibson Challenger 1 guitar and a Premier Royal drum kit. Who to? I've already said. "Resistance", otherwise known as David Woolfson, Angela Heard and Stuart Campbell. Why you no rissen?

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Last year Virgin lumbered us with the staggeringly dull board game Hype — "think you can handle the jungle of record companies, agents, gigs, tours and making records in order to get to No 1???" This year it's the turn of Spectrum owners to suffer at the hands of a certain pop supremo and pickle millionaire. For £6.95 they can buy The Biz, a computer game that asks if you can handle the jungle of record companies, agents, gigs, tours and making records in order... etc, etc, etc.

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Three new professional one inch recorders from Otari... the MX-70s are broken down into an eight-track (£9,620), an eight-track prewired for 16-track (£10,260), and a 16-track (£12,440). The MX-70 can boast "microprocessor-governed constant tension, servo-controlled transport, superior audio electronics with timed bias ramping for gapless insert recording at any speed." Just in time for Christmas, eh?

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HEAR THAT the Bond guitar has moved into production and we are faithfully assured that real instruments will appear in the shops this month. We shall see. Final recommended retail price without the Schaller trem but including power pack is £583.77. The version with trem will be £612.73. Though the price has lurched upwards from the original projections, the Bond is still likely to find a fascinated audience. Can't quite agree with their claim of being "the first serious guitar manufacturing base ever in the UK". Might we say Burns, Shergold, Gordon Smith — not massive production lines perhaps, but 'serious' in their time.

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Gateway Studios, already well known for their recording courses, are expanding their education system. 'The Gateway School of Recording and Music Technology' is to become an offshoot of the Battersea-based seat of learning. The school will continue to run its five-day primary courses in recording which take students from basics (how magnetic tape works), to the involvements of Dolby and frequency-dependent gating. The follow-up Advance Course introduced in summer this year will be returning with such subjects as ambient miking, MIDI and spin-ins. Keyboard technology will also be studied in the Primary Synthesiser Course. The school will have a fully set up 16-track recording and monitoring system for hands on experience, plus a series of Roland keyboards for the synth lessons. Courses vary in duration and price. Contact Gateway on (Contact Details) if you're interested.

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What are these whacky Australians up to now? We will soon be seeing the first Fairlight Computer Video Instrument for the techno-Rembrandts of the planet. It can produce over 4000 colours drawn directly onto the 'video field' using a touch panel built in to the machine. The computer menus list out effects such as paint method, brush shape, paint type, texture, colour wipe, stencils, and so forth, all of which can be combined with live video. In all £4542 inc VAT for the standard version, £5692 for the rack mounted and remote type. This device rivals units two or three times its price, we're told. Incidentally, One Two Testing recently voted Trevor Horn 'Fairlight Grinder of the Year' (© T.B.], Well deserved, we thought.

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Because we've come to expect near perfection from Yamaha, seems Colbert was over God-like in his review of the SG 1300T last month. The grub screws beneath the bridge plate are for moving the saddles back and forwards (intonation) not up and down (string height). The reason the saddles wriggled upwards during the review was because hack-face hadn't previously slackened off the retaining grub screws on top of the bridge. Anyway, Yamaha have at least found a cure for the sticky fine tune screws we mentioned. Each guitar coming through their Milton Keynes warehouse now has a small nylon bush (actually designed for transistor isolation) sitting between fine tune screw and saddle. Action now as smooth as 12-year-old whisky. Jerry Uwins of Yamaha sayeth: "If any Yamaha stockist or owner has an SG1300T without this modification, please drop me a line or telephone (Contact Details) whereupon I will rush them half-a-dozen of these delightful objects. Oh, by the way, what a wonderful magazine!" Well, we had to let him have his say... he seemed so intelligent.

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What news from the world of the Rock Star? Anyone who noticed the brilliant guitar break in the midst of Nick Heyward's last single ('Warning Sign') might like to know the digits in question belonged to Alan Murphy who's been touring the country demonstrating for Fender. Sting currently making a solo album with the help of techno-trio Torch Song and techno-mono Martin Rushent. Gary Moore has been converted to the wonders of the SynthAxe and (on going to press) was planning to be the first artist to record and gig with it. Ends.

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Gibson have been celebrating their 90th anniversary. Incredible, eh? Ninety years ago this year, Orville Gibson started banging out the six-strings in his workshop. He doesn't turn out so many these days, of course. Can't get the wood. The anniversary was celebrated with a concert blessed by Chet Atkins, Earl Scruggs, Buck Trent and some more of Orville's school chums. It happened in Nashville of course.

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A digital sampling unit for under £700, they cried. Where? In Andover under the roof of Powertran Cybernetics Ltd, apparently. The MCS-1 is a mono sampler which can be interfaced with a BBC micro or a keyboard with either MIDI or CV outputs. The under £700 claim is a bit misleading since it's £699 PLUS VAT, and Powertran don't appear to have any ready just yet, but it looks promising. Maximum sample time of two seconds at a 32kHz sampling rate and eight seconds at an 8kHz sampling rate. It can double as a delay line with a top echo time of 32 seconds (64k of memory altogether) and the audio bandwidth is reputed to be 300Hz-12kHz.

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We got up early a few Saturdays ago and visited another of Turnkey's "Hands-On" gatherings at a Chalk Farm hotel. Lots of recording equipment distributors had stands and were inviting us to part with cash, and there were talks and demos downstairs. Main talking point among the suits was the merging of Atlantex and Turnkey. We asked how this would affect the customer in the street and, after some shuffling of feet, it was admitted that the move was mainly significant to business-people. Mind you, Atlantex boss person Bob Wilson said the merger made them the biggest company in this field. "When we go down there'll be a really big crash!" he grinned.

Our ears heard a new Accessit aural exciter-type box that enhanced a mucky tape put through it, although honestly it sounded much like a top boost. The Gateway course people had an 'Equalisation Cassette" for a fiver, whereon are recorded, in standard stereo, various solo'd instrument sounds so you can get used to the eq on your recorder, and finishing with a Faure fugue "played" by a BBC micro. What odd chaps. And a live demo down in the dungeon showed how to tape "Karma Chameleon" with one or two musicians and an 8-track. Tape is a bad medium, we were informed. "Roll on digital," said the MC, "then you can go to 2000 generations..." God (or chosen deity) save us.

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More fascinating snippets to follow up our feature on the re-emergence of the electric 12-string (last ish). Rose-Morris, who own Vox Limited and distribute Vox worldwide, have come back on the suggestion that the Eko factory in Italy still had all the jigs available to put Vox electric 12-strings into production again.

Perhaps, but there have never been the parts available to complete vintage instruments, say Rose-Morris, and the necessary tooling would make the guitars unreasonably expensive. The vintage Voxes which appeared in London in Autumn had originally been reserved for Eko's own collection, and Rose-Morris contest the claim that another 100 Voxes were shipped to Greece: "They were nothing of the kind," said an R.M. spokeschap, adding, "there are no further stocks anywhere in the world as far as Eko and Rose-Morris are concerned.

"Rose-Morris is aware that the vintage shape of Vox guitars is popular. We are also aware that guitar technology has moved ahead. It is envisaged that modern versions of vintage Vox guitars could appear on the market in 1985 at prices which all musicians will feel affordable." Now that IS going to be worth watching out for.

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What about the other half? they said. Last month we reviewed some of the first guitar products from Gordon Whittam — originally 50 per cent of Gordon Smith, Contrary to popular fears we can confirm that the remaining slice — John Smith — is still going strong and has retained the Gordon Smith name.

Those interested in the family trees of such instruments will know that Gordon and Smith first collaborated in the early seventies initially on a part-time repair basis, then building their own guitars distributed by Keith Hand. The two separated into their 'solo careers' in 1980, Gordon Whittam leaving to produce the Gordys as reviewed last month, and John Smith introducing the Galaxy and Gypsy SS lines under the Gordon Smith title, Ah! the wonderful world of the British guitar. Praise be there are people who still know the difference between a piece of sandpaper and a robot production line.

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The Spanner is a stereo panner (s-panner, see) produced by Electrospace of Ely, Cambs, who believe it to be 'the most advanced and versatile stereo panning system yet'. It can twitch your signal about at varying widths, speeds and sweeps (quick one way, slow the other) and the 'trip' can be triggered by an outside source such as a click track or drum machine. At maximum it will drift your signal from one side to the other in 18 seconds. More facilities on board, no space left in magazine except to say it's £454 for the mono input version, £569 for a stereo input.