NAMM isn’t the only big date in the first quarter of MusicRadar’s calendar, however, as March means Frankfurt Musikmesse.

On this year's trip to Germany we had our first encounter with our favourite bit of gear of 2010: the Korg Monotron. The first completely analogue synthesiser to be produced by Korg in donkey’s years, the Monotron is an affordable, pocket-sized ribbon-synth that can produce all sorts of lovely, old-skool squelchy noises - it was love at first sight.

Musikmesse 2010 was also our first glimpse at Line 6’s new all-improved Variax super-guitars. Plus we got our first taste of Roland’s Lucina AX-09 ‘shoulder-synth’ (i.e keytar) a product that we would later have the (we say it ourselves) genius brainwave of handing to our favourite contributor Brett Domino. Oh, and there was a drum kit made of vinyl records (above), very cool.

Check out our full coverage from Musikmesse 2010 here, and of course we’ll be back out there this year.