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Over 300 of the worlds leading musical instrument distributers and maufacturers will be packed into Londons ExCeL venue on the 14th and 15th of June to inspire you, the consumer with their latest gear.

London International Music Show is 4 shows in one; London Guitar show, Drummer Live, Unplugged and the Sound Recording & Technoligy show all under one roof and one ticket gets you into all shows.

The show promises all the lastest gear and technology with siminars, conferences and even celebrities of the music world. You can expect to see exhibitors from “Acoustic Guitar Magazine” through to “Yamaha Music UK”, and instruments from xylaphones to bassoons.

On the Live stage you can see Paul gilbert playing on saturday for the London Guitar show, Chad smith will be beating them skins for the Drummer live line-up, and the list goes on….

For updates on the event visit www.londoninternationalmusicshow.com and be sure to not miss the best music event this year.

Perfect for smaller audiences the 80 Watt Kustom KPA80 has the power and flexibility needed to meet a wide variety of sound reinforcement needs. Four channels, reverb and tone controls provide the tools needed to fine-tune the sound for any application.

Buy the KPA80 PA System

Out of the box this system takes a couple of minutes to set up. Included are 2x mic’s with XLR cables to plug into the amp, 2x speakers with 12″ cones and a power amplifier with four inputs. The amp is rated at 80 watts (rms) with 2x 8 ohm outputs. The speakers are rated at 60 watts (rms) with 8ohm impedance and a frequency response of 75hz-18khz.

Once plugged in and set up, the system kicks out some volume without loss of clarity. Noticeably, it’s lacking some low end. To overcome this we plugged a 15″ kustom wedge monitor in as a slave unit and that seemed to do the job, but was not necessary.

Due to its smaller speaker drivers and the 80w amp, you would not want to use this as your sound reinforcement rig at big show. This system would be happier in the corner of your local pub or cummunity hall, possibly blasting out the best hits from the 80’s or the local folk singer and his acoustic guitar.

So, build quality. Corner protectors as standard on the speakers and the amp. The speakers do feel reasonably heavy and quite rugged, so you wouldn’t be afraid of throwing them in the back of the van with fear of them falling to pieces. A case or soft bag would not go a-miss for the amp however.
Leads and mic’s that come with the package are generic but do the job, upgrading speaker cables always makes an improvement on sound quality.

The conclusion,

A great portable (within reason) P.A system. Ideal for a working solo artist playing small venues, just as suitable for the bedroom or mobile DJ playing to a hall of 100 people.

How is it that in this day and age Maxim can assign a star rating to it–without actually listening the album?

The review of Warpaint–the new album by The Black Crowes in the March issue of Maxim. The writer who has not listened to the album since advance CDs were not made available wrote what appears to be an offensive assessment anyway, quoting “it hasn’t left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth.”

The magazine gave the album a two and a half star rating although the writer nor the editor could have heard more than one song (the single “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution”).

When questioned for an explanation, the magazine described the review as “an educated guess preview.” which is pretty poor.

Black Crowes manager Pete Angelus said, “Maxim’s actions seem to completely lack journalistic integrity and intentionally mislead their readership. When confronted with the fact that they never heard the album they are claiming to ‘review’ in their music section–with a star rating, no less–they attempt to explain that it was an ‘educated guess.’ In an email correspondence, Maxim went on to state: ‘Of course, we always prefer to (sic) hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don’t want to ignore that aren’t available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It’s either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former.’”

Angelus also stated, “It speaks directly to the lack of the publication’s credibility. In my opinion, it’s a disgrace to the arts, journalism, critics, the publication itself and the public. What’s next–Maxim’s concert reviews of shows they never attended, book reviews of books never read and film reviews of films never seen?”

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