Music Merchants’ Do Nimble Two-Step Into Past and Future : Music industry: With dealers offering the equipment they anticipate musicians will be buying and relying on, the NAMM show can also suggest where music is headed.

At the 20th National Assn. of Music Merchants’ Winter Market, held Friday through Sunday at the Anaheim Convention Center, one could become convinced that it was the music industry’s goal to present the world with a new and richer form of bedlam.

Except for NAMM’s sister show in Chicago in the summer and a similar exposition in Frankfurt each year, there is nowhere a sound such as this can be heard: skittering metal guitars, chiming grandfather clocks, overworked drum kits, orchestral kettle drums, accordions, Irish harps, organs, brass, synthesizers and all other things musical down to a pennywhistle--all 650 exhibitors simultaneously pealing to catch the ears of the 25,000 or so music dealers present.

While the objective of the show has always been that of building business between retailers, manufacturers and distributors of musical gear--ranging from digital mixing boards to marching band uniforms--it also has become one of the musical social events of the year, abounding in celebrities and hangers-on.

It is a place where equations and high-volume orders can occur in offices built into an altarlike edifice, while the booth outside is presided over by a looming, smoke-spitting likeness of Godzilla. It is a place where the notion of the bimbo still runs strong--one exhibitor featured a model signing posters on which her topless state was only slightly abridged by the judicious placement of the company’s wah-wah pedal.

With dealers offering the equipment they anticipate musicians will be buying and relying on, the NAMM show can also suggest where music is headed in the days to come.

Hi-tech guitarist Steve Morse, while specifically at this NAMM show to promote the Morse model guitar offered by Ernie Ball, said he always attends.

“I come to see other musicians and the new products,” Morse said. “That really is the attraction with all the people I know. Seeing the equipment like this keeps you abreast of things. The show is an international thing, so it gives you a reading of what’s going on, what people are thinking everywhere, of the general attitude of music today. You can’t really do that anywhere else.”

If the NAMM show does provide some indication of where music is going, it might be accurate to describe its motion as a nimble two-step into both the past and future. While synth and software makers struggled to make last year’s models obsolete, the hot new thing with several manufacturers was the resurrection of classic ‘50s and ‘60s instruments, recognizing the sizable vintage market where certain 30-year-old guitars sell for upward of $10,000.

Perhaps the most noticed of these was Gretsch’s return to guitar-making, after a long absence, with Japanese-made reissues of its original models once popularized by rockabilly stars and by the Beatles. With such gaudy features as metal-flake tops, branding-iron burns, swizzle-stick bindings and steer-skull inlays, they were difficult instruments to ignore.

Veteran guitar maker Rickenbacker (which recently added a new factory at its Santa Ana headquarters) also capitalized on its Beatle past, adding a John Lennon signature model (approved by Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono), to its line of ‘60s reissues and current designs.

“The reissues are a good percentage of our sales, but not by a long shot are they the major part of it,” said company head John Hall. “Certainly they strike a note of nostalgia in people, and they’ve helped open the door for some to our newer instruments.”

Other exhibitors riding the retro wagon included British amp giant Marshall, Fender, Gibson, and Nashville’s Jerry Jones, who is making exacting copies of the weird-on-a-budget Danelectro guitars that once haunted the Sears & Roebuck catalogue.

Meanwhile, on the jaunt into the future, Yamaha seemed to have the first lap to itself with its new SY77 synthesizer. The Japanese firm (with U.S. headquarters in Buena Park) revolutionized the music world in 1983 with its now-ubiquitous DX7 synthesizer, and its reps consider the SY77 to be an even bigger advance.

Three years in designing, the $3,000 SY77 is an interactive combination of digital sampling with Yamaha’s advanced frequency modulation synthesis. In a demonstration performance, the synth realistically replicated a variety of sounds ranging from a surfacing submarine to a tenor sax solo to several sounds not of this earth, hinting at a near-infinite capability.

Yamaha product manager Charles Fielding said he doubted the instrument could repeat the tremendous sales success of the DX7, noting the less crowded product field when that instrument was introduced, but said: “The SY77 is a much greater technological advance, and I expect it will become the professional’s piece of choice. . . . The big breakthrough to me, more than its range of sounds, is that it is the closest anyone has come to the warmth and expression one can find in a great acoustic instrument.”

Other firms claimed to also be aiming for a human-responsive mix of tradition and technology, such as Seattle’s THD Electronics update of the coveted tweed Fender Bassman amp of the late ‘50s. While retaining the look and sonic character of the original, the THD (recently in use on the Rolling Stones’ tour) is loaded with state-of-the-art noise reduction, effects-loop and protection circuits.

Designer Andy Marshall explained the confluence of new and old: “It’s a bit like the Mazda Miata. That car is a direct knockoff of the old Lotus Elan, but it took enormous amounts of high-technology to be able to make something in this day and age that has the stability and safety of a current product, but has the character everyone loves in the old product. This amp is eight times more complex technologically, but it responds to the player the same way.”

Another company blending elements of both eras is G&L; Musical Products of Fullerton. Helmed by electric guitar pioneer Leo Fender, the guitar manufacturer’s line includes a couple of instruments that owe a nod to Fender’s universally copied classic Stratocaster and Telecaster designs, but they also have substantial updates.

G&L;’s Dale Hyatt, who helped Fender introduce his then-radical electrics in the early ‘50s, said they have no interest in reliving their glories.

“The technology has improved, there are better materials available, so we shouldn’t be making the same instrument we made then. It ought to be better. If we can’t make it better, we ought to quit.”

Along with Rickenbacker, G&L; has resisted following a great many manufacturers in moving their operations to cheaper climes overseas.

“Why do we stay here? Well, maybe we’re not as smart as we ought to be. But we want to make an American-made product. We want to stay here and make it work.”

Despite failing health, the 80-year-old Fender continues working, and Hyatt provided some insight on why they remain in the highly competitive business.

“I don’t think I’m quite ready to retire yet. I get a good deal of satisfaction out of being responsible for putting an instrument together, putting it in a musician’s hands and seeing his face light up and reinforcing his enthusiasm for what he’s done all his life. You feel like you’ve done something. To me, that’s a satisfaction that I don’t know where I could find anywhere else. I couldn’t get it selling automobiles or ladies shoes, because I didn’t make them.”