The Sounds of Music Are Heard in Anaheim : Gathering: Every instrument in the world, along with people to play them, are on display at convention center.

Composers are missing the opportunity of a lifetime here.

Sprawling through the National Assn. of Music Merchants Winter Market that ends today at the Anaheim Convention Center is virtually every musical instrument in the world, in quantity, along with the people to play them, just begging for a guiding hand to lead them into a majestic symphony celebrating human diversity.

Not that the lack of a unifying composer keeps people from pounding away on all the instruments anyway, with the net effect being not so much a wall of sound but a tower of babble. Resounding throughout the Convention Center’s six halls was a nearly maddening clash of Native American drums, Japanese flutes, Arabian dumbeks, warbling synths, disco beats, blaring horns, hip-hop samples, pianos, bagpipes, and the overriding noodling sounds--to quote Eric Burdon from the decidedly more rhapsodic “Monterey”--of 10,000 electric guitars a-groovin real loud.

If an earthquake hit, it might be a while before anyone noticed it amid the din, which began Friday.

At one booth, piano polish maker Barron Abramovitch displayed a photo montage of the havoc the quake caused at his Chatsworth home, and offered a glass bowl full of concrete rubble with a sign reading “Free Epicenter Souvenir.”

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The purpose of the NAMM show (which is not open to the general public) is to allow musical merchandise manufacturers and distributors to introduce their wares to retailers, and it is a decidedly big business, drawing about 48,000 people annually, with millions of dollars in orders being taken.

It is where instruments that will affect the sound of music in years to come are introduced, and where others that fail to catch the ear will fall by the wayside.

Musical instruments, at their best, are conduits for expression, invention, mood, individuality and soul, as well as being the tools on which a huge entertainment industry is founded. Given that, the NAMM sales floor might serve as an indicator for the state of the nation.

In years past that indicator could be pretty grim. Through the ‘70s and much of the ‘80s, musicians generally felt that major manufacturers--many of which had been bought up by corporate conglomerates--had lost their vision and weren’t putting out viable instruments.

And while some small independent firms were making innovative, quality instruments, it was painful to see the swift demise of hapless others who meant well but hadn’t a clue of how to compete. Let us have a moment of silent remembrance for those departed makers of banana-flavored saxophone reeds and Chevy fin-shaped guitars.

But over the past several years, a remarkable turnaround has occurred. Major firms, often under new, smaller ownership, began making instruments that matter.

A particular example is guitar-making giant Fender, late of Fullerton but largely relocated now to Scottsdale, Ariz. With both exacting reissues of its classic ‘50s and ‘60s guitars and amps (the coveted Fender tube reverb unit has been reissued this year) and creative variations blending in modern technology, the company is doing right by the legacy of its departed founder Leo Fender, whose decades of invention are being celebrated in an exhibition at the Fullerton Museum Center.

At the forefront of the current Fender company’s efforts is its Custom Shop headquartered in Corona. There, instruments are made to a musician’s exact specifications, along with radical designs originated by the plant’s 40 master builders. Among their new works this year were an Egyptian-motif Stratocaster, a metal resonator Telecaster and a gold metal-flake Dick Dale signature model guitar.

Several of their designs, such as the Signature Series (including Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton models), have been successfully introduced into Fender’s mass-produced line.

Said Custom Shop head John Page, “When we started the Custom Shop seven years ago with just two guys we were looking to resurrect the mystique of Fender. That had gone down over the (former corporate owner) CBS years. So it was a prestige building thing, where the company said, ‘We don’t care about making money, let’s just make some great guitars.’

“As builders, we’ve found artistic freedom there. It’s probably one of the few occasions that corporate America and art have been able to merge, where the artists don’t feel stifled and the corporate side doesn’t feel like they’re bleeding. It’s a nice profitable operation.”

Guitarist John Jorgenson of Hellecasters and Desert Rose Band fame used to be one of Leo Fender’s musical guinea pigs, trying out the guitars he developed in the ‘80s for the G&L; Co.

Strolling the NAMM show Friday, Jorgenson remarked, “As I’ve both read and know from experience, Leo Fender and those old guys always wanted to talk to the players and listen to what they like and don’t like. The business moved away from that for quite a while, but now they’re sensitive to what musicians need again.

“Something else that’s bringing back the values those old vintage instruments had is now the age group that originally liked those things has moved into positions of influence. We’re the old (dudes) in control now.”

Whoever is in charge, they do seem to have more fun than one sees at other trade shows.

Samick guitars advertised their wares with a display in which a guitar-flailing teen-ager roamed his messy teen-ager’s bedroom, safely behind bars bearing a sign reading Guitarus Teenageous. One vendor selling discotheque systems had go-go dancers frugging atop its booth. At the Marshall amp display, rep Michael Doyle urged customers to sample the firm’s new 4,000-Watt bass amp: “Step into our sound room to hear them, and get your pancreas shifted around,” he offered.

Some firms promoted their wares with private concerts featuring such name talents as Los Lobos, Richard Thompson and Buddy Guy. But the most creative marketing effort, by far, came from New Jersey-based Charlie Stringer Strings. Anyone making use of any of the 203 urinals at the Convention Center couldn’t help but note that the plastic strainer in each bore Stringer’s name, booth number and the invitation to come visit.

“I’ve gotten an unbelievable response to that,” said Stringer, who sells guitar strings called Snarling Dogs.

Stringer’s packaging and ads are full of flippant jokes, and says, “I find if you personalize the stuff like that, the kids love it. I’ve been getting fan mail.” It has allowed his small company to find a niche in a very crowded end of the business, and thinks that bodes well for the state of the American entrepreneurial spirit. “This says we can all still get to Hollywood if we all put our eyes on the ball,” he said.

Orange County successes include Huntington Beach’s Actodyne General, which this year is introducing an acoustic guitar pickup to its line of acclaimed electric guitar pickups, which are used by Eric Clapton, and are stock features on several of Fender’s upscale models.

Placentia’s Bigheart Slide Co., meanwhile, has picked up the Hellecasters as endorsers for its guitar bottleneck slides, and introduced a line of ceramic slides.

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Though guitars are still the noisiest kid on the block at the NAMM show, the only things that might truly be regarded as innovations are happening in the somewhat less sexy realm of microchips. It is a brave new world, as noted Chantays’ surf guitarist Gil Orr observing the show, “We’re like typewriter guys looking at computers here.”

Most of the current high-tech excitement at NAMM lies in the burgeoning amount of hard and software available to set desktop computers to musical tasks. There are innumerable means now for getting your PC or Mac to produce, mix and edit music, so that anyone can be a desktop Phil Spector.

The most readily impressive item for guitar-heads was the G-Vox from Lyrrus Inc., which “puts your guitar and computer on speaking terms,” says the company’s Kristin Stearns. The $395 product has vast possibilities, including the ability to play something on your instrument and have it instantly converted into sheet music form. It also offers tutorial functions where one can follow note-by-note on computer screen diagrams of riffs by guitar hotshots such as Steve Morse.

The standout innovation of the show came from Yamaha, which has its U.S. headquarters in Buena Park. Yamaha has long led the field in synthesizers, but has practically thrown out all it has done previously in designing its new VL 1 (Virtual Lead 1), the harbinger of a whole new synthesizer technology which is not dissimilar to the computer virtual reality models of physical environments.

According to Yamaha rep Jim Presley, “The VL 1 is unique in the fact that there are no samples, no tone generators, no oscillators as all previous synths have relied on. It instead is a computer model of a musical instrument. Its physics are the same as the physics of the real musical instrument. As a result you get something sounding very much and reacting very much like a musical instrument.”

The computer modeling uses a complex algorithm to simulate the physical properties of a real instrument. That model in the VL’s case is a tube, which can be configured to respond like any number of woodwind instruments, including a few that don’t exist. Like a real-life instrument, there are more nuances to master than on a standard synth. The payoff is that it is far more musically expressive--responsive to a player’s input--than previous synths.

Since it is modeled on wind-driven instruments, the instrument, which looks much like other keyboard synths, is best used in conjunction with a MIDI breath controller, into which a player blows. Unlike the polyphonic synths long standard on the market, the VL 1 can only sound two notes at once. That is one more than you can get on a real sax, though, Presley points out.

They do have a working polyphonic prototype, which may eventually find its way to the market for $30,000 or $40,000, Presley says. The VL 1 lists for $4,995, which may seem a lot to pay to avoid the taste of a sax reed (banana-flavored or no), but the VL 1 may well be the breakthrough in the lack of warmth and expression that even synth manufacturers have admitted to be a hurdle in their products.

It’s innovations like these that can set players on the path to a career in music, such as street musician Mike Masley, who was setting up his Hungarian hammered dulcimer in the chill evening air outside the NAMM show Friday. On a microphone stand he had mounted an inverted 7-Up liter bottle, with the bottom cut off to accept donations. “They’re a pretty responsive audience here,” he commented.