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NAMM 2024: Tama is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024, and as such we’ve been hoping for some special gear to mark the occasion. Well, it turns out that the wait is short, because the Japanese drum giant has unveiled its first release of 2024, and it’s a reissue of one of the most sought-after snare drums of all time: the Mastercraft Bell Brass.

Casio Computer Co., Ltd. announced today the release of new additions to the G-SHOCK brand of shock-resistant watches. The new GPR-H1000, which belongs to the RANGEMAN series of timepieces designed to deliver true value in survival settings, features an optical heart rate sensor and GPS functionality to perform in the harshest natural environments.

Yamaha’s Reface CP has long been admired for the quality of its electric piano sounds, but if you want to get the best out of them, you really need to play them on a bigger keyboard. Thanks to the CP’s MIDI In, doing this is easy, but for one studio furniture builder, that wasn’t quite enough.

Best of 2023: The Modern Lite has a thin mahogany body with a belly cut for comfort, and comes in fresh solid-colour finishes with matching headstocks – and with a refreshing $1,499 price tag

Arturia has announced Efx Refract, a stereo multi-effect “with versatility at its core”, and has only gone and made it free until the 4 January. It’s the latest in a series of free music software giveaways this year, making 2023 something of a bumper freebie year. And if you download one free plugin this year, we reckon you should make it this one…

We thought we had it good with Tom Bukovac’s chord lesson last week, but it looks like the Nashville session ace and tutor Brett Papa are just getting started. They’ve got a picking lesson and it’s inspiring and eye-opening in equal measures.

Seiko is broadening the appeal of its 5 Sports collection of affordable trend-led automatics with the launch of two models with a field watch design and the added functionality of a second time zone hand and 24 hour bezel.
There is a raw steel version on a steel bracelet and an all-black piece on a black strap it calls the Seiko 5 Sports Deception.

MINDst Drums is a highly detailed sampled drum kit equipped with a new sampler engine designed by Modalics specifically for this plugin. In creating the software, Modalics collaborated with “long-time musical collaborator and drum guru” Doron Giat to figure out how to capture the nuance and detail of an authentic drum performance using sampling technology.

Who knows whether the Behringer UB-Xa will win any awards for its performance, but we’d like to give it some kind of prize right now for being the synth with the longest time between announcement and release. Believe it not, we wrote our first story about this Oberheim OB-Xa clone back in January 2018 – that’s almost six years ago – but only now is it finally ready to come to market.

Casio Computer Co., Ltd. announced today the release of new additions to the G-SHOCK brand of shock-resistant watches. The three new GW-B5600CD watches are the brand’s latest collaboration with the Charles Darwin Foundation, an organization that engages in environmental conservation activities in the Galápagos Islands.