Basscheck

Dave Burrluck passes judgement on a carbon fibre-necked original. Not a carbon copy at all.

Not quite a name, not quite a musical instrument, but a useful tool for sampling and investigating sound with the help of a BBC B computer, a couple of controls, and some friendly advice from Uncle Ian Waugh.

Drum Expander

Your drum machine used to dictate the sound of your music - but the variety of sounds in Alesis' drum expander gives you back your freedom. Tim Goodyer says everything starts with a D.

Eight preset, eight memory programmable four-note poly

A Look Around

Processor

Roland EP-50 electronic piano

Roland's new electronic piano; a surrogate mother

Kinkade's hot semi

mixed-mode CD tracklist

The words behind the sounds on this month's CD and CD-ROM

Guitars For £150

Begin with a Bargain — reckon a new guitar for less than £150? We show you how

Software for the Atari ST

Until now writing MIDI software has been the preserve of a few dedicated individuals, but T-Basic offers to make MIDI programming accessible to the masses. Ian Waugh gets online.

Real-time additive synthesis at an affordable price will become a reality when the KS hits the shops later this year. Rick Davies previews Kawai's best yet.

Tanrak System

Ian Waugh concludes our appraisal of Tantek's budget modular FX system, and reveals there's plenty more to come in the near future.

For Spectrum and Amstrad Computers

The would-be Fairlight killer comes under scrutiny at last. Ian Waugh reports on an ambitious add-on for Spectrum and Amstrad micros.

Multitrack Cassette Recorder

Affordable cassette multitrack with a few unexpectedly sophisticated features.

GuitarCheck

Dave Burrluck is pleasantly surprised by yet another pair of Japanese clones

Synthesiser Hardware and Software for the BBC Micro

Acorn's first venture into music synthesis boasts some good-looking synthesis hardware and a music composition language - AMPLE - that grows with the user. David Ellis has the advance details.

the stepped neck stuns

Italian-designed keyboards have received mixed success over the years. Elka's old Rhapsody string synth was a popular instrument in the seventies but their main polysynth, the Synthex, failed to set the world alight. That may well be about to change with the release of their impressive 9-voice, multi-timbral, DX7-soundalike, the EK44, and the 6-voice analogue EK22. Or is it? Mark Jenkins offers his views.

Digidesign Softsynth & Turbosynth

What can you do with a sampler when you're bored of sampling? Paul Ireson finds an answer to this question in the form of creative software from Digidesign that can turn your sampler into a powerful synthesizer.

We release a sample

the music papers and how to get your name into them

Paul Wiffen goes stateside to find out what new products we can look forward to from the U.S of A

Shadow MIDI Guitar

Geoff Twigg takes a look at the latest guitar synth technology. Now you can have a Synclavier system behind the strings of your old acoustic.