You'd think they'd change the layout of the controls...

... or the colour. On the left, a Line6 Echo Park pedal. On the right, the new Behringer Echo Machine pedal. Then again, I suppose Line6 didn't get the green from nowhere. Previously, Behringer were sued by Boss. They changed the cosmetic design of the pedals and the lawsuit went away.

Now you can connect a television to your modular synth

If you are building a gnarly Behringer-based modular synth, you might want to add a few of MFB's new range of modules - a drum sequencer for €169, a triple DCO oscillator for €159, a couple of cheap drum modules (€89/€99). By far the most entertaining is the €159 VD-01, which takes any synth sources and outputs a standard RCA video - turning your TV in to an oscilloscope.

Behringer's ever-expanding pedal range

I feel slightly mucky to admit that one of the few things that really caught my eye in all the Messe coverage was Behringer's fast growing range of tiny, cheap, nasty plastic stompbox range. At Messe the announced an analog-style filter which I'm guessing won't sound much like a Moogerfooger, but will cost about 1/15th of the price, a phenomenally complicated-looking harmoniser/pitch shifter, which looks sure to be £25 worth of plastic fun, and a knobtacular Bass Synthesizer Pedal if you're too cheap to buy the Boss version. I'd love to see someone breaking up these pedals and turning them into a big, gnarly, gruesome-sounding modular synth...

It's a Roland Space Echo in a pedal (Plus more from Messe)

So, yes, Messe is all over. Last year I was there, this year I was so busy and so generally uninspired with what I saw, that I'm only posting now. This is the Roland RE-20 Space Echo Pedal. I love the look (reminiscent of the Fender vs Boss mashups from Namm), although it's a shame they couldn't squeeze a VU meter in there (unlike this monster which my friend Neil just bought). Somehow, if Roland wants to pillage their past, this feels like the right way to do it. (UPDATE: They're now on sale)

Otherwise at Messe:
The Nord Wave - a new, likely-to-be-expensive keyboard synth, which - unlike any other Clavia product - uses samples.
John Bowen's Solaris: OK, it's going to be a big, mindbogglingly expensive hardware digital synth. Sure, it's pretty looking, but I'll be amazed if this ever makes it into shops.

Tiefenrausch: Seriously knobby and tiny synth module - there's a good shot here.

Did you see anything cool? Am I just jaded? Let me know...

Trinity portable studio looks pretty hot wrapped in plexiglass

I was never blown away by the Trinity DAW - a weird looking $1,000 self-contained Linux-powered portable recording studio - when it was announced last August. But I have to admit, this picture of it in action at the Linux Audio Conference yesterday is pretty nice...

Marek's dancing robots are cool

Marek Michalowski is a Ph.D. student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His latest project is Beatbots - cute little robots with microphone noses and video camera eyes which can dance to music. In the video on his site, the 'drum' clip is OK, but the clip of the robot dancing to Spoon's 'I turn my camera on' is fantastic. It's all done with Max/MSP, obviously. (Thanks, J-Chot)

eBay of the Day: Weltmeister Basset vintage keytar

eBay item #130091982608 is a wonder: A mid '60s Eastern European bass keytar, built around a kind of Rhodes/Clavinet electro-mechanical reed piano mechanism, wrapped in nasty marbled blue plastic. It's $54 with three days to go. It probably actually sounds great. There's a nice long review of a Claviset (the daddy instrument this thing is based on) here.
(Via Matrix Synth)