Plugged In to Acoustics : Owners of Shade Tree Stringed Instruments Test Tone of Trade Show

Amid the ear-wearying, all-surrounding din of drums, amplified guitars, digital keyboardsand scores of voices trying to speak over said cacophony, Greg and Margie Mirken set out once more to do the National Assn. of Music Merchants annual winter trade show in their own way: NAMM Unplugged.

For 17 years, the Mirkens have run Shade Tree Stringed Instruments, a small but important hub of traditional acoustic music in Orange County. The little shop in Laguna Niguel sells wares that, with few exceptions, are impervious to power blackout. The Mirkens also run an evening concert series that regularly brings world-class touring musicians to Shade Tree, such as tonight’s performances by Montreal-based “new folk” quartet Ad Vielle Que Pourra. (See accompanying story.)

So, when the Mirkens go to the NAMM show each year, as they have since before they opened the store, their agenda is narrowly focused on a world without amps. As NAMM grows bigger--about 800 exhibitors were at the four-day show last weekend at Anaheim Convention Center, up nearly 100 from a year ago--the Mirkens’ slice of it grows proportionally smaller. While music’s reliance on technology booms, there’s no reinventing the acoustic guitar, the hammered dulcimer, the banjo or the harp.

“We’re real fringy,” said Margie, a thin, peppy, briskly speaking foil to her stocky, laid-back husband. “There’s less and less (at NAMM) that we do anything about.”

The problem with NAMM Unplugged is that NAMM Plugged is playing simultaneously in the same space. The Mirkens collectively play eight different instruments, performing in their spare time both as a duo and as half of the traditional Celtic/British folk band Blackthorn. Greg is also host of a radio program, “Folk Roots,” Sunday evenings from 6 to 8 on KSBR, 88.5 FM.

But even for a well-tuned ear, they said, the reverberating halls they were browsing last Friday, the opening day of NAMM, were no place to judge how an acoustic instrument sounds.

Not that they didn’t try, anyway. This year’s big NAMM development, as far as the Shade Tree owners were concerned, was the Martin Guitar Co.’s introduction of a new model, the D-1, that will sell for $1,000. That may sound pricey to most. But Martin--”Est. 1833,” as separate display signs in bright but tasteful neon and genteel wood inform you at the company’s carpeted booth--is the Cadillac of acoustic-guitar makers. The D-1 represents a bid to expand into a somewhat more affordable price range.

Margie picked up the no-frills D-1, held it against Greg’s ear, and strummed. Greg did likewise for her. The verdict? Too noisy to tell.

“In here, you can play a $200 plywood Korean guitar and a $2,000 handmade guitar, and you can’t hear much difference,” Greg said.

“If you’re paying $1,000, you’re paying for nuance, and you can’t hear nuance” amid all that noise, Margie agreed. “I have to sort of buy it on trust, because I can’t hear it. It’s very well-priced, and it’s made by C.F. Martin,” a famous name that is Shade Tree’s best-selling make of guitar. Margie places an order for 10 D-1s, a large investment for a shop that Greg says grosses about $20,000 in a good month.

In any case, the Mirkens say they don’t rely so much on NAMM as a place to assess the sound of the instruments they might want to buy, as to size up the people who build and sell them.

“You get a feel for the way people are doing business, for whether the builder has that heart and soul,” Margie said. She and her husband know that they may be sized up as well. “The small makers we deal with want to know you. They want to know how their products will be represented” in a shop. “It’s like puppies”--a conscientious breeder wants to make sure the dog ends up in a qualified and properly appreciative home.

The Mirkens stopped by Dusty Strings, a Seattle-based maker of harps and hammered dulcimers. They greeted the owner, Ray Mooers, who began making hammered dulcimers in his basement 16 years ago because he liked how the instruments sound. Mooers has been supplying the Shade Tree for years, and in fact added harp-making to his repertoire because of a special request from the Mirkens and the owners of two other acoustic-instrument shops in Southern California.

“It really takes some dedication” for a shop owner to sell dulcimers and harps, the instrument-maker said. “They’ve got to be in tune, and there’s a lot of strings there to tune”--about 60 in the case of the hammered dulcimer, a trapezoid-shaped instrument played with thin wooden mallets. The Shade Tree tunes its harps and dulcimers every other day, because the Mirkens don’t want prospective customers to walk in, ask for a demonstration, and hear a bunch of sour notes.

As the Mirkens made their rounds at NAMM, they worked their network of connections in the relatively close-knit world of traditional folk music. They met Martin Simpson, a British guitarist who has performed at Shade Tree; he directed them to Bob Brozman, a highly rated traditional blues slide guitarist who is at NAMM to play on behalf National Reso-Phonic Guitars.

Greg invited Brozman to play the Shade Tree the next time he’s touring in Southern California. The couple also ran into Happy Traum, a notable player from the ‘60s folk boom who now produces instructional videos. Margie thinks the Shade Tree isn’t selling as many videos as it should; she asked Traum if he could check with other stores he deals with and pass along any sales approaches that they have found to work well.

As they browsed, the Mirkens had a few bemusing encounters with the plugged-in music realm. Margie spotted Steve Morse, the electric-guitar hero, near a huge touring bus that DiMarzio, a maker of electric-guitar pickups, had wheeled in to draw attention.

“If I recognized more rock stars, I’d probably be impressed,” Greg said. “But most of the guys I’d recognize are dead.” In the Mirkens’ experience, heroes of acoustic music tend to cause less of a stir among NAMM-goers than their electric counterparts. “One time, Mark O’Connor was sitting there, playing unbelievable stuff, and nobody was listening,” Margie said, referring to the ace country-bluegrass fiddler. “That’s because he wasn’t wearing spandex,” Greg added wryly.

After conferring with Traum and placing an order for guitar and Dobro capos, the Mirkens wandered on. Greg made sarcastic note of two models in clingy outfits handing out leaflets for Gemini, a maker of amplifiers: “Babes at 12 o’clock.” Actually, he said, “I think the babe count is way down” from past years.

Margie was pleased by this apparent decline in crass, sex-sells marketing, but not so thrilled by what she sees as a continuing shortage of women in acoustic music.

At the Martin Guitar exhibit, she offered some advice to Chris Martin, chairman of the family-owned company: Why not have a marketing campaign for the company’s C-16 model, targeting the parents of sweet 16-year-old girls?

“It’s a sweet-sounding guitar, it’s the C-16 and it sells for 1,600 bucks,” Margie said, fleshing out a sales pitch. “Every little girl should have one of these on her 16th birthday. So if you really love your daughter, don’t get her a car, get her a guitar.”

Martin was open to suggestions. “It really bugs me that for every one woman who buys a Martin guitar, 18 men buy Martin guitars,” he said. “And if that’s the way it is with acoustics, what is it with electrics? 100 to 1?”

After this first day’s preliminary “reconnaissance,” Greg said, the Mirkens would return a second day to take a closer look at specific items like music books. But the Shade Tree owners have no firm strategy for shopping NAMM, no planned-out budget or list of needs.

“It’s absolutely seat-of-the-pants,” Margie said. “We’re not business people, unfortunately, but we’ve managed to stay in business (all these) years. It’s enough to make a living. We’ve never been greedy, we never think big, because we like to be mom and pop.”

“I drive old cars,” she added wryly, “but I’ve got a $9,000 guitar.”

After taking care of NAMM Unplugged in two visits, the Mirkens planned to return a third day to do NAMM-for-kids with their daughters, 9-year-old Sally and 5-year-old Jeanette.

“I want them to see that music is fun,” Margie said.