NAMM 2010 Wrap Up

Every year in January, the Anaheim convention center in the heart of Orange County, CA is overrun with pro audio nerds, guitar and bass shredders, drum geeks, marching bands, producers and engineers, mad scientists, music store buyers and instrument distributors, musical instrument manufacturers, advertising and sales people, an army of media personnel and tons of others I can only describe as culture victims. Amid the throngs of girls dressed like ’80s hair metal music video vixens, 40-year-old dudes with 14-year-old-boy haircuts in leather pants, mullets, skullets, crappy Misfits tattoos, rock stars, wanna be rock stars and has-been rock stars (mostly the last two), there’s a musical instruments trade show going on. NAMM.

I’m afforded access to the show — which is trade only and not open to the general public — through the auspices of my day job, and I usually spend all four days of the show in the company of sales people and editors explaining to clients, prospective clients and instrument product managers the benefits of marketing musical instruments to buyers through the internet. This year, however, though I received a badge through work, I was not on the clock, and I was only there for two days, which, though I felt a bit of a rush to get through it all (it’s a big show), was nice because I’m usually ready to start killing people half way through the third day.

Since I was in it for strictly personal reasons this year, I spent my time hunting for stuff that I’m personally interested in: bass gear, effects pedals, drum machines and analog synths, and, to a lesser extent, software. I was hoping to have my mind blown by some of the new stuff at the show and that didn’t really happen, but through all the random silliness and standard faire, I did find a few things that I’d like to add to my collection of noise making devices…

MTD Kingston P-Style Bass. I noticed a show-wide design trend in most of the new basses on display: Body types are sleeker, thinner and narrower, lots of 5- and 6-, even 7- and 8-string basses, with lots of tone shaping options (i.e. a lotta knobs) — just a general move away from what constitutes the classic design and construction aesthetic. I’m all for progress and evolution, and to be fair, some of these new basses play really nicely, but personally, I just can’t get down with them. Call me a traditionalist, but I like four strings (in standard tuning), one or two pickups and one or two knobs. Simple. Which is why I sorta fell in love with a MTD Precision-style bass (top of the rack in the photo) that I saw at the booth of retail distributor Dana B. Good. The tobacco sunburst body, central humbucking pickup configuration and basic controls (volume / tone) is exactly what I like. Because this particular model was on display at the DBG distributor booth and not at the MTD booth, I assume this is one of Mike Tobias’ Korean-made models, but I don’t care. The action and intonation were spot-on, and Mike’s really high-end hand-made stuff isn’t my cup of tea anyway (too many strings, exotic woods, tone controls I don’t need / want, etc.). I’d like to spend a little more time test driving this bass, but I’m already considering picking one up.

Dwarfcraft Devices. One of the coolest manufacturers and displays of gear I encountered this year was downstairs in Hall E, the “Freak Hall” area of NAMM where the bootstrapping indie companies, mad scientists, left-of-center luthiers, and Chinese bulk manufacturers show off their wares. Colin (Ovipositor singer / guitarist) alerted me to the presence of Dwarfcraft Devices (via a post they made to the Electrical forums), and I made a point of checking them out. What I found was two guys, a bass and a guitar, a Fender Bassman amp, and a folding card table full of interesting effects pedals sporting cool art, nonstandard interfaces (like joysticks), and, most importantly, awesome sounds. We talked for a few minutes, I explained a little about my seemingly eternal struggle for the “right” distortion pedal, and they let come behind the table and plug the bass they had into a pedal called the Eau Claire Thunder. I was totally blown away. In fact, I’ve been obsessing on the pedal since I left Anaheim, and bought one the other day. I’ll try to post a full report on the device when I get it and can run my own bass through it into my own rig, but just to give you an idea of what it sounds like (awesomely fucked up), check out the demo on YouTube.

Some Other Effects Pedals. As far as effects go, I generally tried to avoid the usual suspects — Electro-Harmonix, Boss, etc. — in favor of more boutique manufacturers, or stuff I thought was weird / cool / extra special. The Z. Vex booth, for example, had a ton of really cool looking pedals on display (pictured), nothing I was personally interested in, but Zachary Vex was hunched over his work bench throughout the show, where he announced a new direction for this pedal shop: open source. He’s going to start selling the schematics with every pedal, and he introduced a pedal kit that allows tinkerers to get into and fiddle with his designs to come up with their own mods on these unique effects (which has been happening for years without his official consent, so…). And though they’re not a boutique manufacturer (they are, however, independent in every sense of the term), I was also pretty impressed by a new pedal that Tech21 will be releasing in May 2010, the Red Ripper: a distortion pedal with a built-in envelope-style filter that controls the amount distortion based on attack, and a low-pass filter to cut the annoying buzz that can accompany bass distortion in the higher register, especially in use with an amp that has a horn. Cool concept, nice execution, good dirty sounds, clean bypass — pretty much everything you want out of a distortion pedal, with a little something extra.

Teenage Engineering OP-1. Easily the most fun toy I played with at this year’s NAMM show, this little rectangular device is a sampler, looper, synth, drum machine and more, all housed in the frame of a digital four-track recorder. It’s got a mic, a line-in and a USB port, so there are a variety of ways to get samples in to it, and once they’re there, a variety of ways to manipulate the samples: change tempo and pitch, apply a number of effects, etc. Once everything sounds the way you want it to, simply hit the record button to capture loops one track at a time, bounce multiple tracks down to a single track and keep building — pretty much how an analog four-track works. I really had fun with this thing, and I’m going to have a hard time staying away from it once it’s released sometime closer to summer 2010. The guy at the booth told me the price point was going to be somewhere between $500 and $1000, and I think that if they can keep it closer to $500, it’s sure to be a hit.

Dave Smith Instruments. I love Dave, and — full disclosure here — my good friend Joanne and her awesome husband Andrew work at Dave Smith Instruments, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m inclined to say nice things about their stuff (I can be a real asshole like that). However, as an owner of an original MoPho synth, which I love, I’m always interested in what’s next from Dave’s shop, and I’m never disappointed. This time, it was the Tetra synth, which was released a few months ago, but which I had not had the chance to get up-close and personal with; and the MoPho keyboard (pictured), which was unveiled at the show and has since caused quite a stir among synth nerds. The Tetra is a lot like the original Mopho — all analog, hand-made, and housed in a similarly sized small box with similar controls — but rather than a single voice (“MoPho” comes from “monophonic”) the Tetra has four voices. I played one hooked up to a Akai MPK25 MIDI controller keyboard, and it was everything I expected: Dope. The MoPho keyboard, as the name suggests, is a MoPho in keyboard form, with more dedicated controls, nicely weighted reactive keyboard interface, and a generally work-friendly control surface. Added bonus: chain up the Tetra and the MoPho keyboard as a controller and command a total of five synth voices. Polychained multitimbral madness! Synth-nerd-tastic!

There was a ton of other stuff at the show I was mildly interested in, slightly enamored by, or found downright stupid or ridiculous, so I took a bunch of photos…see if you can tell which is what (you can click over to the gallery on Flickr to see them in all their full-sized NAMM glory):