I had a fun time at NAMM to say the least. Met up with Wyliee, Skuttlefunk (who apparenty did some amazing business at the show), and Orpheo. I thought I'd just post some pics, notes, and highlights for me and maybe the other members who went can do the same in this thread.
People I met at the show besides forum members:
- MJ of Seymour Duncan
- Brian Wampler - lovely man, I told him I used his mod instructions to make my Boss DS1 not sound as crappy.
- Jimmy Vivino of Conan O'Brien's Basic Cable Band (he gave me his business card and told me to email him so he can get me into the show... it has his phone number on it... )
- Jim Dunlop - very briefly ran into him
I also saw a bunch of apparently somewhat famous metal guitarists signing, but honestly I can't identify anyone from the metal scene since that's not really my style of music. I'm reasonably sure I spotted Paul Reed Smith at one point, as well as Electro-Harmonix founder (and inventor of the Big Muff Pi) Mike Matthews. I saw a bunch of guys I recognized from youtube product demos and shootouts (but alas, I never saw the alligator boots of Gearmanndude). Oh, and I saw Enigma there. Google him if you haven't heard of him... he's a sideshow performer, can't miss him.
Oh yeah and I saw this guy just randomly playing at the Framus booth unannounced:
That's Earl Slick of the New York Dolls who has played a lot with David Bowie. There were literally only like 5 people including me stopped to watch him play, very low-key.
Stuff I bought:
- ZVex Instant Lo-Fi Junky pedal
- ZVex Fuzz Probe weird Fuzz Factory with a theramin plate attached to it - so. much. fun.
- Some buffalo horn carved picks - thought I'd give them a go, they've got a different grip on them that I found interesting.
- Ernie Ball coated strings - they were like 75% off retail price so I figured I'd try them and see if I like them as much as my Elixirs
- heated musician's gloves for playing outside - again, they were a good price and I've definitely played in the park at night a few times and my hands got uncomfortably cold
Okay finally, the cool products I saw or heard about that I thought were worth mentioning:
- Magnatone amps are back - holy living crap, they were awesome. After a while you get desensitized to all the amps blaring all around and it all just turns into background noise even if the sound is great. I was just walking past the booth and I stopped in my tracks when I heard these things being demoed. Seriously worth checking out - and I think they are featured as top picks from the show from several publications now.
- Obviously I was impressed with the ZVex booth.
- Earthquaker Devices - very nice pedals. The Organizer is pretty interesting, but they had a lot of cool classic type sounds as well.
- Wampler - as to be expected, exceptional pedals. Check out the reverb and faux tape delay.
- Mojo Hand pedals were really nice, I liked their delay a lot.
- I played a TV Jones guitar - nice feel to it.
- The new Taylor electric solid bodies were pretty amazing, the SGish looking ones especially. They sounded really good just through a headphone amp, and played awesome.
- Sperzel and Schaller now make copper finish tuners. Schaller has this Da Vinci series that is very nice on the eyes if you like a modern look, and that is available in chrome, gold, copper, and I think kind of a matte finish chromey looking color as well.
- I found a guy who makes distressed copper hardware, and not only that but will also plate any hardware piece you want in any metal finish you want if you just ship the part to him! That was exciting. His stuff was really cool, and he apparently does custom pieces for a lot of builders out there.
- Seymour Duncan is releasing it's "Whole Lotta Pickup" Jimmy Page humbuckers finally after years of them being more of a custom shop thing.
- TonePros now also make distressed parts including copper.
- MOD Kits DIY was there, sounded pretty good, and kind of got me intrigued because of their tube powered pedal kits. They showed me an instruction book - much more professional looking and detailed than BYOC. And it's all original designs and point-to-point, and most of their kits are fairly easy on the wallet.
- Option Knob was kind of cool. It just makes it so you can control your pedals easier with your feet. I thought they were a little overpriced though. They have an extender arm for easier control if you like to change settings a lot with your volume or tone knob on the guitar a lot while playing as well.
- Musician's Institute now offers a week long guitar building workshop. $1600 bucks and you build your own guitar from scratch in their workshop.
- Graphtech now makes picks out of TUSQ. I found their claims to be a little dubious about the benefits of that, but they also had a lotion that apparently neutralizes PH on your hands so you don't destroy your fretboard and strings as quickly. Again, not sure if it's snake oil, but if you have really acidic hands, it might be worth a try. I think you can get free samples from them.
- "Ratio" tuned machine heads also from Graphtech... yeah not sure if it's all BS but there you have it. Each one in a set is designed for a specific string, so it supposedly is easier and faster to tune.
- Vox has a new delay pedal similar to the Line6 DL4. It sounded good and was fun to play with. It's called a Delay Lab. And come to think about it, I played a Vox guitar that I liked, but I can't remember which one it was now...
- D'Addario has some new fangly strings that have more even/consistent tension across the whole set or something. Judge for yourself if it sounds silly.
- Digitech had the Whammy DT pedal there that can be set to only drop or rise by a specific interval.
- Eastman guitars - holy crap. Check out the archtops and the 335ish stuff. Unbelievably nice for Chinese-made guitars. Apparently they're totally hand made.
An $11,000 Duesenberg
George Benson signed Ibanez
Eastman guitars. I WANT!
At the Wampler booth
Jam session at the National booth
Reverend guitars galore
Mike Matthews (the Santa Claus looking guy)
James Trussart Tele
A really pretty Carvin
Part of the ZVex hand-painted counter
Sweet mother, that's a lot of Marshalls
Orange amps up the yin yang
Some crazy looking Godin
I think that's about it that you guys might be interested in. If I think of more stuff, I'll post again.
If you went to the show - what/who did you see/meet?
People I met at the show besides forum members:
- MJ of Seymour Duncan
- Brian Wampler - lovely man, I told him I used his mod instructions to make my Boss DS1 not sound as crappy.
- Jimmy Vivino of Conan O'Brien's Basic Cable Band (he gave me his business card and told me to email him so he can get me into the show... it has his phone number on it... )
- Jim Dunlop - very briefly ran into him
I also saw a bunch of apparently somewhat famous metal guitarists signing, but honestly I can't identify anyone from the metal scene since that's not really my style of music. I'm reasonably sure I spotted Paul Reed Smith at one point, as well as Electro-Harmonix founder (and inventor of the Big Muff Pi) Mike Matthews. I saw a bunch of guys I recognized from youtube product demos and shootouts (but alas, I never saw the alligator boots of Gearmanndude). Oh, and I saw Enigma there. Google him if you haven't heard of him... he's a sideshow performer, can't miss him.
Oh yeah and I saw this guy just randomly playing at the Framus booth unannounced:
That's Earl Slick of the New York Dolls who has played a lot with David Bowie. There were literally only like 5 people including me stopped to watch him play, very low-key.
Stuff I bought:
- ZVex Instant Lo-Fi Junky pedal
- ZVex Fuzz Probe weird Fuzz Factory with a theramin plate attached to it - so. much. fun.
- Some buffalo horn carved picks - thought I'd give them a go, they've got a different grip on them that I found interesting.
- Ernie Ball coated strings - they were like 75% off retail price so I figured I'd try them and see if I like them as much as my Elixirs
- heated musician's gloves for playing outside - again, they were a good price and I've definitely played in the park at night a few times and my hands got uncomfortably cold
Okay finally, the cool products I saw or heard about that I thought were worth mentioning:
- Magnatone amps are back - holy living crap, they were awesome. After a while you get desensitized to all the amps blaring all around and it all just turns into background noise even if the sound is great. I was just walking past the booth and I stopped in my tracks when I heard these things being demoed. Seriously worth checking out - and I think they are featured as top picks from the show from several publications now.
- Obviously I was impressed with the ZVex booth.
- Earthquaker Devices - very nice pedals. The Organizer is pretty interesting, but they had a lot of cool classic type sounds as well.
- Wampler - as to be expected, exceptional pedals. Check out the reverb and faux tape delay.
- Mojo Hand pedals were really nice, I liked their delay a lot.
- I played a TV Jones guitar - nice feel to it.
- The new Taylor electric solid bodies were pretty amazing, the SGish looking ones especially. They sounded really good just through a headphone amp, and played awesome.
- Sperzel and Schaller now make copper finish tuners. Schaller has this Da Vinci series that is very nice on the eyes if you like a modern look, and that is available in chrome, gold, copper, and I think kind of a matte finish chromey looking color as well.
- I found a guy who makes distressed copper hardware, and not only that but will also plate any hardware piece you want in any metal finish you want if you just ship the part to him! That was exciting. His stuff was really cool, and he apparently does custom pieces for a lot of builders out there.
- Seymour Duncan is releasing it's "Whole Lotta Pickup" Jimmy Page humbuckers finally after years of them being more of a custom shop thing.
- TonePros now also make distressed parts including copper.
- MOD Kits DIY was there, sounded pretty good, and kind of got me intrigued because of their tube powered pedal kits. They showed me an instruction book - much more professional looking and detailed than BYOC. And it's all original designs and point-to-point, and most of their kits are fairly easy on the wallet.
- Option Knob was kind of cool. It just makes it so you can control your pedals easier with your feet. I thought they were a little overpriced though. They have an extender arm for easier control if you like to change settings a lot with your volume or tone knob on the guitar a lot while playing as well.
- Musician's Institute now offers a week long guitar building workshop. $1600 bucks and you build your own guitar from scratch in their workshop.
- Graphtech now makes picks out of TUSQ. I found their claims to be a little dubious about the benefits of that, but they also had a lotion that apparently neutralizes PH on your hands so you don't destroy your fretboard and strings as quickly. Again, not sure if it's snake oil, but if you have really acidic hands, it might be worth a try. I think you can get free samples from them.
- "Ratio" tuned machine heads also from Graphtech... yeah not sure if it's all BS but there you have it. Each one in a set is designed for a specific string, so it supposedly is easier and faster to tune.
- Vox has a new delay pedal similar to the Line6 DL4. It sounded good and was fun to play with. It's called a Delay Lab. And come to think about it, I played a Vox guitar that I liked, but I can't remember which one it was now...
- D'Addario has some new fangly strings that have more even/consistent tension across the whole set or something. Judge for yourself if it sounds silly.
- Digitech had the Whammy DT pedal there that can be set to only drop or rise by a specific interval.
- Eastman guitars - holy crap. Check out the archtops and the 335ish stuff. Unbelievably nice for Chinese-made guitars. Apparently they're totally hand made.
An $11,000 Duesenberg
George Benson signed Ibanez
Eastman guitars. I WANT!
At the Wampler booth
Jam session at the National booth
Reverend guitars galore
Mike Matthews (the Santa Claus looking guy)
James Trussart Tele
A really pretty Carvin
Part of the ZVex hand-painted counter
Sweet mother, that's a lot of Marshalls
Orange amps up the yin yang
Some crazy looking Godin
I think that's about it that you guys might be interested in. If I think of more stuff, I'll post again.
If you went to the show - what/who did you see/meet?