Our December 1986 issue didn't have a cover story per se; the cover photos of a 19th-century serpent horn were supposed to visually represent sampling, showing that you could sample anything. You had to read the fine print on the table of contents to know that, but it was a cool cover.
Indeed, we ran six stories about sampling. Tim Tully (then a freelance author, later an EM editor) started the ball rolling with an overview of the market. The heart of the article was a table showing specs for 25 samplers, ranging from the $130 Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard to New England Digital's $72,000 Synclavier. Tully then explained the specs categories, giving readers a good basic understanding of how to shop for samplers. He also created a template for product roundups that we used for many years.
Next was the master himself, Craig Anderton, with one of his classic collections of useful applications ideas, tips, and tricks for using a sampler to fix problems in a mix. Michael Levine (not the Mike Levine who is the Onstage editor) followed with additional tips for the E-mu Emulator II, after which Steven Cox delved into the Akai S900. Anderton then returned with an explanation of how to make a sampler that appears limited to equal temperament to produce alternate scales. John Diliberto put the whole sampling suite in historical perspective with a story about sampling pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry.
But we covered a lot more than sampling in December 1986. Anderton supplied an article about the state of electronic guitar, including a breakdown of what he considered right and wrong with guitar synthesizers. Helmuth Lemme also addressed guitarists' interests with a primer about guitar pickups.
The early issues occasionally covered video-oriented subjects, and Don Slepian was the resident expert. In December 1986, Slepian discussed ways of using controlled random variations to quickly generate video. In other video coverage, Matthew Leeds reviewed Electronic Arts' Deluxe Video Construction Set video-generation and animation software for the Commodore Amiga computer.
The December DIY section mostly focused on assorted small projects. In addition to showing you how to build a headphone monitor, continuity tester, and mono monitor (for checking mono compatibility), we offered plans for DIY security locks and other security devices for keyboards and other music gear.
That left room for just one other product review: Craig O'Donnell's evaluation of Western Automation's DASCH (Disk Acceleration/Storage Control Hardware) for the Mac. DASCH consisted of as much as 2 MB of dynamic RAM in a powered box that connected to a Mac serial port. Essentially, it provided an alternative to RAM disks, letting you run applications or the Mac OS in fast, relatively affordable D-RAM that (unlike a RAM disk) did not clear its memory when the computer was powered down. It wasn't long before RAM and hard drives increased dramatically in capacity and dropped in price, but in 1986, DASCH was cool.