Snares

Guitarcheck

Plug in, lean back, legs apart — and sound like an accordionist. Tony Mills taxes the axe

Nominated by Adrian Belew, Bill Nelson, Roddy Frame, Ted Nugent, Robert Smith, Dierdre Cartwright

A Bad Job

This month we take a look at salvage techniques. What to do when you have to re-mix someone else's less than ideal master tape.

Sound Designer Software

The Emulator II finds a new friend in the Apple Macintosh, courtesy of a little American ingenuity. Together, the two make sweet sound-editing music, as Paul Wiffen reports.

As your MIDI studio expands, MIDI management becomes more and more important. Vic Lennard investigates an 8x8 MIDI patchbay that could make your music more important than your MIDI leads.

Drumcheck

Bob Henrit gets a bang out of Sonar's lightweight lovely

West 3 Studios

Rebuilding a studio control room is not a task for the feint of heart, as Dave Buckley of West 3 Studios in West London reveals in this amusing case study...

Touch-Sensitive Polysynth and Programmer

Criticised in the past for their poor implementation of MIDI, Roland have given their new mid-price polysynth the full works. It sounds good, too, as Paul Wiffen discovers in this exclusive review.

Buying & Using: microphones

microphones: how to choose them and how to use them

Digitech TSR-12

Multi-effects, sampler and more!

Evolution Synthesis EVS1 Sound Expander

This British designed multitimbral synth expander offers several types of synthesis, free Atari ST editing software, built-in drum sounds, and a low price. Paul Ireson lends an eager ear.

Simmons SDS9 electronic drum kit

Simmon's new drum kit

Bob Henrit's new image builder

A Driver-Stage Dissection

More from that maestro of the multimeter, Ben Duncan.

SYSTEM: electronics/Technical terms/explain/full readout/graphics/buzzwords FILE FOUND: vocab engineer/Andy Honeybone

Computer Music System

Gerry Queen brings us an exclusive preview of what will be Britain's first custom-designed computer music system - from the people who brought you the OSCar monosynth. It's capable of combining analogue, digital and sampled sound sources, and it's cheap.

Fashion

Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Obscure orchestra leader, Simon Jeffes intrigues Paul Tingen with stories of self-discovery in Japan, and finding music in one note.

Soundcraft Spirit Folio

A quality name, a quality product, an affordable price tag — Soundcraft's new portable mixer seems to have it all. Derek Johnson wants to carry one home.

Flattening the earth, contextualising the computer.