In an unprecedented gesture of good will, Yamaha Corporation and its President, Takuya Nakata, have granted possession of the Sequential brand back to its original owner and company founder, Dave Smith.

To celebrate this auspicious event, at this week's NAMM show, Dave Smith Smith's is debuting a new analog poly synth bearing the Sequential name: the Prophet-6. The new instrument features voltage-controlled oscillators, filters, and amplifiers. Its emphasis is on vintage analog tone with modern reliability.

Tiny, mighty, and affordable, the JD-Xi puts a true analog synth engine, Roland's famous SuperNATURAL synth sounds, and many other creative tools under one hood.

Equipped with 37 mini keys, this compact instrument delivers fat, warm analog bass and lead tones with ample controls for hands-on tweaking, plus polyphonic PCM essentials like pads, strings, brass, and more. Create impressive loops in a flash with the pattern sequencer and built-in drum kits, and explore expressive vocal textures with the gooseneck mic, Vocoder, and AutoPitch.

The MS-20M Kit is based on the MS-20 with additional improvements; it's an analog synthesizer module where you can choose your preferences and assemble yourself.

In addition to greatly enhanced synthesis possibilities provided by oscillator sync, FM, two filters (pre and post), and PWM, there are jacks such as a CV IN that supports both Hz/V and V/Oct, making it play nicely with other equipment.

KORG has brought back the ARP Odyssey for today. With the advisory assistance of David Friend, the co-founder of ARP Instruments, KORG has completely reproduced the original circuitry for artists looking to recreate classic sounds and explore new ones. Together the engineers at KORG and Arp were able to nailthe sound and feel of the original. Every detail has been carefully considered to stay true to the quality of the original, down to the sophisticated semi-hard case.

New from Roger Linn Design is LinnStrument, an expressive 200-pad MIDI controller that captures three dimensions of each finger's movement for subtle control of note volume, pitch and timbre, polyphonically. The note pads are arranged in a grid like a guitar or any stringed instrument, and continuous pitch slides across multiple note pads are possible. 200 six-color LEDs indicate scale notes in any of 6 colors. 22.5" x 8.25" x 1". 5 lbs. Street price: US$1499