Cheetah Marketing was a

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

-based company that produced

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

-related hardware products and software for home computer systems during the 1980s. They later changed their name to Cheetah International Ltd. Based in Cardiff, Cheetah was run by two brothers, Howard and Michael Jacobson, but owned by Cannon Street Investments. The company was closed in 1993 when the UK recession badly hit the share price of its owners. After this

Chris Wright Christopher Allen Wright (born January 15, 1965) is an American government official, engineer, and businessman serving as the 17th United States Secretary of Energy, United States secretary of energy since 2025. Before his appointment, he was th ...

and Nick Owen bought the music products division and formed Soundscape Digital Technology Ltd. The joysticks and other computer peripheral products division went to another company in the Cannon Street group.

Products

The company originally produced joysticks like the infrared R.A.T. for the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

and

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...

computers and later branched out into music peripherals and stand-alone musical equipment for price conscious home users. Among their offerings were the SpecDrum (a sample-based

drum machine A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument that creates percussion sounds, drum beats, and patterns. Drum machines may imitate drum kits or other percussion instruments, or produce unique sounds, such as synthesized electronic tones. A d ...

), a Cheetah Sound Sampler, a Cheetah Midi Interface, and in the later, 8-bit/16-bit

drum machines A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument that creates percussion sounds, drum beats, and patterns. Drum machines may imitate drum kits or other percussion instruments, or produce unique sounds, such as synthesized electronic tones. A d ...

music sequencer A music sequencer (or audio sequencer or simply sequencer) is a device or application software that can record, edit, or play back music, by handling Musical note, note and performance information in several forms, typically CV/Gate, MIDI, or Open ...

, and a range of music keyboards (including

polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ...

analog Analog or analogue may refer to: Computing and electronics * Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable ** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals *** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...

digital synthesizer A digital synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses digital signal processing (DSP) techniques to make musical sounds, in contrast to older analog synthesizers, which produce music using analog electronics, and samplers, which play back digital rec ...

s and rack mount modules). Joysticks and peripherals included the Cheetah 125, Cheetah 125 Plus, Mach 1, and an infrared joypad. Cheetah's range of music products expanded quickly during the 1980s when they began to work with external designers. Among these were

, who later founded Soundscape Digital Technology, Ian Jannaway, who later founded

Novation Digital Music Systems Novation Music is a British musical equipment manufacturer, founded in 1992 by Ian Jannaway and Mark Thompson as Novation Electronic Music Systems. Today the company specialises in MIDI controllers with and without Keyboard instrument, keyboards ...

and Mike Lynch, who later founded

Autonomy Corporation Autonomy Corporation PLC was an enterprise software company founded in Cambridge, United Kingdom in 1996. The company developed and sold a variety of enterprise software, including for big data analytics, information governance, data protection ...

. Cheetah also distributed the Gamate handheld console in the UK.

Music products

*Cheetah SpecDrum - drum machine add-on for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum *Cheetah MQ8 - performance sequencer. *Cheetah MD8 - 8 bit MIDI

. *Cheetah MD16 - 16 bit MIDI drum machine (also with the rack mount variants MD16R, MD16RP) - designed by

and Nick Robbins. *Cheetah MK5/7VA - 5 or 7 octave MIDI keyboard controllers - designed by Speedwell Software *Cheetah Master Series 5/7/7P - MIDI keyboard controller, 5 or 7 octaves with

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

weighted keyboard action - designed by Chris Wright and Nick Robbins. *Cheetah Master Series 7000/8000 - MIDI keyboard controllers with advanced features, 5 or 7 octaves and piano weighted keyboard action (shown at the

NAMM Show The NAMM Show is an annual trade show in the United States organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), which describes it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...

in 1993 but never manufactured due to demise of Cheetah - 6 prototypes are known to exist) - designed by Chris Wright and Nick Robbins. *Cheetah MS800 - Digital wave synthesizer - designed by Lynett Systems ( Mike Lynch). *Cheetah SX16 - 16 bit sampler - designed by Lynett Systems (Mike Lynch). *Cheetah MS6 - 6 voice

analogue synthesizer An analog synthesizer () is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a variety of vacuum-tube (t ...

- designed by Ian Jannaway

Products

Music products

References

Further reading