NAMM Show Wednesday
Posted by Joe Caruso on Wed, Jan 13, 2010 @ 07:19 PM
Arrived in less-than-sunny Annaheim,CA this afternoon. Hard to tell the cloud cover from the smog, but it's still nice to see green grass and palm trees in January. I'm here for the bi-annual music retailers trade show, the biggest and most widely attended of the two, the smaller being the summer show in Nashville. Today is set-up day for the event. Thousands of manufacturers and vendors hauling in truckloads of keyboards, amps, drum sets, pianos, brass and woodwind, and of course guitars. It's a thrill to walk around the halls before the official start of the show and witness the controlled chaos as folks scramble to get things set up before the big event. Not only is it the quietest day of the event, it's also a chance to get a sneak peak at any new products. I ambled over to the Collings booth, which was set up surprisingly early this year. A couple of years back, Steve McCreary and crew showed up the day before the show with newly designed booth fixtures and didn't finish assembly until 2am Thursday, after numerous trips to the local Home Depot for spare screws and such. This year, everything is up and ready to go, but no instruments are out on display yet. Have to wait until tomorrow. Word has it that they'll be bringing a couple of MT2 Mandola prototypes plus a very cool AT16, the color and style of which has yet to be revealed. Knowing Bill Collings, I imagine these instruments won't be arriving until sometime late Thursday or Friday, as soon the finish cures.
The National Resophonic booth looked very enticing, with at least 2 dozen of their lovely resonators gleaming under the hall lights. I saw a very interesting square neck Polychrome and a few of their steel single-cones in eye-catching new colors.
George Lowden and crew were putting the final touches on their booth. Some gorgeous guitars in koa, Brazilian, "sinker" redwood and walnut. You've got to hand it to Lowden, after all these years, there really isn't anything that looks or sounds as striking as their guitars. The new Pierre Bensusan Signature model is particularly nice and will surely be coming home to grace TME's showroom (pics to come soon).
Probably the most intriguing offering is from Martin Guitars. Their new Performing Artist Series has been receiving a lot of buzz over the last week, in part because design-wise it's a real departure for the ultra-conservative CF Martin and the fact that it bears an uncanny resemblance to a very well known model from our friends in El Cajon, CA. There will be three models in this series, DCPA1, GPCPA1, and OMPCA1. All spruce and rosewood with ovangkol body and neck bindings and Fishman's new F1 Aura system discreetly and attractively installed with a minimum of visible controls. I'll be getting more details at the guitar's unveiling tomorrow. For now, check out Martin's press release.
~Joe Caruso