Did you hear Jenkins on the radio the other week, plugging the mag for all he was worth? Fine figure of a barre-tender. Having already seen Beyond E Major go from column form to album triumph, Richard Skinner decided it was fitting for B. Jenkins, Esq, to regale us over the earwaves. Billy played a couple of Beyond E Major numbers on an episode of Radio One's Saturday Live... only a minor delay while his Fender Champ blew up and a producer rushed off to borrow another one. See, it happens to the professionals, too.

Those inspired by his fine broadcasting voice can still get the album, iconoclastic as it is, from Allmusic Records, (Contact Details). To you £4.49 post, packing and plastic.

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If you fancy leading a life without leads, try Toa Electronics' radio guitar system. For your £510 in used notes you get a lightweight belt-mounting transmitter and a receiver designed to fit those 19in racks you see in all the best studios. The receiver includes a headphone monitor and the possibility of direct connection into a mixer. And you can choose between a single channel receiver and a twin-antenna model which stops you wandering off into total silence somewhere out of radio range. And the whole kit is Home Office approved, so there's no danger of the Filth cutting you off in your prime. Contact Toa Electronics in Ongar, Essex.

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It had to happen. The Moog Song Producer. What you do is feed in half-a-dozen callow youths and a chord chart of startling mediocrity and wait for the nicely-pressed pound notes to come pouring out the other end. Oh, there's a socket on the side to feed into your video recorder.

But it's not really like that. I gather it's what top scientists have been known to call an interface, a metal box that lets you connect MIDI instruments to Commodore C64, SX64 and C128 computers. You must buy your own disk drive and television/monitor. Included is Songstepper, a compositional program that allows you to enter in real time or step mode form up to 24 drum tracks and eight music voices. Moog say the program is "oriented toward the composer, arranger and producer who may or may not have keyboard skills," which is called having your cake and eating it. The whole thing can be sync ed up to tape, and the usual video displays and printouts are available so you can see as well as hear what you are doing. The thing costs $395 in the States. It's anyone's guess what it will cost here. That depends upon the economy, doesn't it Ma'am?

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You have to admit, it's the sort of instruction that makes you stand up and take notice. "Once fitted, Tubby Synth mikes can be adjusted quickly and easily with an ordinary hairdryer. Simply heat the cable a couple of inches from the mike, bend it to the new shape and allow to cool," says the brochure for Tubby Drum's pick-up kit for giving your acoustic drums that electronic sound. What you do is, stick the mics and their heat-bendable cables inside the drums with some gaffa tape or by permanent fixing, then plug them into the Tubby Synth, where you con lark about with the sound.

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Bless ye the shifting exchange rate. Changes in the dollar/sterling business (and perhaps the occasional review comment) have caused Sequential to drop the price of their Multitrack from £1700 to £1199. Much better.

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Synthesizer enthusiasts can get a cassette of the winning entries in Roland's most recent international synthesizer music contest for £4.95 from Synsound at The Sound House, East Molesey. The music comes from all over the world, and judging by the titles it sounds like no laughing matter. For instance, you can groove along to Shigeo Ogasawara's little ditty "Reality in a fantasy... and I", while Soichi Terada offers "Kattingu Etude". Then there's Joel Vandroogenbroeck's "Animal farm" and Igor Czerniawski's "Poland".

Whatever happened to "Popcorn and "Son of My Father", that's what I want to know.

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What do Trevor Horn, Hugh Padgham, Alan Parsons, Robin Millar and Colin Thurston have in common? Yes, they are all producers. But they are also apparently executive committee members of the Record Producers' Guild, along with other such luminaries as Peter Collins, Alan Winstanley, Swain, Jolley and Phil Wainman.

Quite what this organisation actually does is still a matter for speculation but the credentials seem impressive enough. It's linked to the Association of Professional Recording studios, and you can only become a member by invitation. The Guild's first chairman (shouldn't that be chair, or chairperson, boys?) is APRS executive member Bob Hine. He says, "the intention is that the Guild's attitude will be positive, never negative. The members want a strong united voice when talking to the record industry, but they do not want in any way to destroy the rapport they already have with that industry." The man's obviously a politician.

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Efficient Germanic amplifier manufacturers, Dynacord have a new 300w bass combo with the attractive name Reference 3,000. Apart from four 10" speakers, the beast runs to an 11-band equalizer, a compressor, an active crossover for bi-amping use and a filter tunable through the 100 Hz to 300 Hz range. Sounds remarkably Trace Elliotish to us.

Apparently the box was supposed to come out "in flightcase look" But not now. "Due to its integration into the Reference Series flightcase look is no longer necessary", say Dynacord, of Straubing, West Germany. "Please correct your documentations accordingly," they warn. Always good advice.

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Ah, the sounds of the Orient. The twanging of the koto, the reedy note of the bamboo flute, the ethereal wind-chime, er, the rasping wail of the blues harp.

Not so unlikely as it might seem, now that master harmonica-cum-electric piano-cum-guitar manufacturer Rohner AG of Trossingen, West Germany, has signed a hefty deal with the People's Republic of China. Apart from the obvious imports, Rohner plans joint manufacturing and distribution ventures and what is rather inscrutably termed "the transer of know-how". The deal will be signed and sealed in October. Roll on the electric windchime.

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The invincible valve marches on. The latest Dean Markley instrument power amp offers 100 watts of valve power in a rack-mounting frame, with top-level studio musician features such as balanced in puts and outputs, a ground lift switch, and a fan to keep things cool during long hours of dropping in. I want one.

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Irish guitar maker Chris Larkin popped into the office the other day while over on a speculative business-building trip. He's been making one-off instruments for five years in County Kerry, but now the local Independent Development Authority has agreed to support a feasibility study. The feasibility in question? Selling "production" models in the English market, and possibly even finding a distributor. He showed us a couple of attractive instruments — a bass with a lovely stained black body, a sandwich of sycamore, maple and mahogany, apparently, contoured away to reveal changing layers of the two woods, and a strong-looking spliced neck joint. A nice touch was the bog oak shamrock on the headstock that Chris puts on each instrument — and according to him that oak is 4000 years old. Then came the six-string — specially-wound Kent Armstrong pickups with staggered outputs and custom-spaced polepieces — and another nice sandwich of ash, mahogany and something called "wenge". A recessed jack socket turned up on the back: "It's the logical place," insists Chris, "it keeps the lead away from your feet and doesn't clutter up the front." Luck was wished and coffee was drunk. Contact Chris at Castlegregory, (Contact Details).

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In these days of economic gloom and despondency, massive unemployment and the inevitable decline of the exploitative capitalist system (cue singing of The Red Flag, film of crop-headed men in trenchcoats queuing at the dole office, etc) it comes as a great pleasure to find out about somebody opening something. And in Britain.

The £750,000 Soundcraft Electronics factory in Borehamwood, Herts., brought 70 new jobs to the area, which is not to be sniffed at. The factory will make the famous Soundcraft mixers, of course, but is also ready to take the company into new areas including television, video and radio consoles, cassette duplication systems and amplifiers.

Not bad for a company which started off as a two-man operation as recently as 1973. Now it employs 200 and has a turnover of £6.5m, and is heading for a 1986 share issue on the unlisted securities market, which is just one step away from the stock exchange proper. No doubt their relatives still ask them when they are going to get real jobs.