Sounds and Fury: Selling Products and Activism : Technology: For four days Anaheim was the center for all things musical--new and classic, primitive and futuristic, fine and frivolous--and a few political.

Language had the Tower of Babel. Music has the NAMM show.

It is difficult to think of music as the universal language while strolling the sprawling National Assn. of Music Merchants Winter Market, the four-day event that concluded Monday at the Anaheim Convention Center.

An annual trade show where 988 vendors of the musical instrument and pro-sound industry display their wares to 48,000 retail dealers and others, the NAMM event is where you hear screaming metal guitars, Australian didjeridus, pipe organs, Karaoke machines, synthesizers, music-oriented personal computers (“We make computers groove “ was one company’s slogan), timpani and every other imaginable instrument simultaneously, to mind-numbing effect.

Amid this din, musicians and music store owners attempt to find products that will shape the sound of music to come. As usual, products ranged from primitive to high-tech, from retro to micro, from elegant to frivolous.

There were guitar-shaped toilet seats offered by a firm called Jammin’ Johns, not to be confused with “The Jammer,” a home-computer software program claimed to be a “complete PC recording studio, studio musicians included.” According to Richard Grant of Soundtrek, the program simulates players improvising musical parts to parameters selected by the user.

Another tech toy was Yamaha’s Silent Synclavier piano, which, like previous models, can be played like a conventional piano, can play itself or can digitally record one’s playing. This model, though, also has a feature to prevent the piano’s hammers from hitting the strings. That might seem to defeat the purpose of a piano, except that when the hammers are disengaged, a digitally synthesized piano kicks in, allowing one to play--through headphones--with full gusto at 4 a.m.

Guitarists can similarly rig for silent running with the new Roland V-guitar system. The company claims that this new guitar synthesizer can, among other things, simulate the unique characteristics of any combination of guitars, amplifiers and acoustic environments, all in a box that can plug straight into headphones or a recorder.

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Along with such innovations and the old standbys, this NAMM show also revealed an increasingly activist industry doing what it can to oppose the growing anti-arts climate in government and, specifically, cutbacks in school music programs.

For the first time, the association set up a Government Relations booth on the exhibition floor. On the first day, more than 1,000 participants wrote or E-mailed their congressional representatives.

NAMM has long championed school music programs and now is going into battle armed with new statistics, said Bob Morrison, NAMM’s director of marketing development.

“We firmly believe--and have a solid body of information to support it--that music-and-arts education is an equal and vital part of the education of children, not something to be bandied about and taken out whenever it is politically convenient,” he said.

Morrison cited a 1994 UC Irvine study that showed childhood involvement in music resulted in far higher spatial reasoning skills, and other data indicating that music students generally score higher on SATs than those who don’t play.

Elsewhere at the show, guitar-making giant Fender unveiled a new Bonnie Raitt signature-model Stratocaster. It is the first Fender named for a woman in the company’s 49-year legacy, a legacy that Raitt termed “the best use of cutting down a tree I can think of.”

She is donating her royalties on the instrument to a program that will provide guitars and lessons to inner-city girls. Raitt kicked off the program with a benefit concert at NAMM Friday that, along with an auction of Fender guitars, raised $80,000.

At a press conference before her performance, Raitt said, “The idea of government cutting music and arts and increasing our military budget at all is just beyond belief to me, as if the arts aren’t important enough to help counter what’s wrong in society. We in the music industry will help take up the slack for now, but those guys have two years to get it together.”

Later, she told the concert audience of her hopes that music would give disadvantaged girls greater chances in life.

“I hope that some young woman we helped knocks me off my perch real soon,” she said.

“Not yet, though,” she added, cranking up her guitar and launching into a rocking, 75-minute set.

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Hers was but one of several industry showcases over the weekend. The same evening as Raitt’s show, Keyboard magazine hosted a concert with Joe Zawinul, Bruce Hornsby, Keith Emerson and a league of other keyboard heavies. Other manufacturers caught the eye with fanciful displays at the show, including a two-story castle that one firm erected inside the hall, while another had a life-size flying saucer angled over its booth.

Despite a sluggish economy in other sectors, the musical instrument industry has been in a boom over the past few years. As Sterling Ball of Ernie Ball/Music Man guitars put it, “If you can’t do well in the guitar business right now, you’re really screwed up.” Some vendors said they consider their products to be nearly recession-proof.

“When you’re worried as hell, you go buy ice cream. People are always going to need to have fun in their lives,” said Nashville guitar-maker Jerry Jones, who is back-ordered three months on his electric sitars and other oddball instruments.

“The entertainment business just rolls along through depression, good times and war,” said Pat Quilter, president of Costa Mesa’s QSC Audio, which last year sold $50 million worth of movie theater and concert sound equipment.

“People still want to go out to hear music, to the movies or discos, and there we are.”

While other manufacturers have in recent years fled Orange County to other states or Third World nations, Quilter said, “We just don’t think the other companies tried hard enough here. We’ve looked into overseas production, but we have a cost-efficient factory and dedicated work force right here that does a great job, and we’re part of a community.”

Though his business making pro-audio gear is growing at 40% a year, Quilter said he wants to resume making guitar amps--where he got his start a quarter century ago--for the fun of it.

Guitars and their accompanying gear remain the biggest attention-getters at NAMM, and they still command the biggest percentage of the industry’s $4.6 billion annual sales (1993 sales of guitars and amps topped $880 million, followed by acoustic pianos at $566 million). As in years previous, the established makers were joined at the show by dozens of newcomers.

One byproduct of that glut was summed up by veteran Orange guitar dealer Steve Soest, who observed with despair: “It’s all copies of copies of copies.”

The one item Soest did regard as beyond cool, he said, was the Tone King guitar amplifier. The product of first-time NAMM attendee Mark Bartel of Baltimore, Md., the Tone King has a decidedly post-Jetsons design, looking rather like a space-age ‘50s hi-fi console, done up in two-tone Naugahyde and sitting on skinny furniture legs.

“There’s a ton of new amps out here, but I’m finding if you go to the effort to be different, people notice,” Bartel said. He confesses to being a little perplexed by the nature of the attention he’s getting, though.

“It’s amazing. It took me six years of electronic design to come up with this amp, and it seems like it’s the couple of months of aesthetic design that’s drawing people to them,” he said.

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Guitar legend James Burton, who helped define rock guitar in the ‘50s with Dale Hawkins and Ricky Nelson, later working with Elvis Presley, Emmylou Harris and others, was pulled in by the looks of Orange County’s Montana & Murga guitars, covered in boot-stitched tooled leather with two-toned flame or intricate floral patterns. Burton, a lifelong Fender player for whom the company created a Telecaster signature model, ordered a pair of the Montana & Murga instruments.

Eddie Montana is a Huntington Beach music-shop owner and guitar builder, while Murga is a noted San Juan Capistrano custom-boot maker whose designs have graced the feet of Hank Williams Jr. and other stars.

Montana said he was surprised to find that the decorative addition “actually improves the sound. It warms up the tone, getting rid of the trebly overbite common to Telecaster-type guitars.” And if that’s not enough, you can get the $1,995 to $4,500 guitars with matching custom boots for another $700. (The Fender Custom Shop also displayed two leather designs that were stunning to both eye and wallet.)

Another Orange County NAMM participant was Fullerton’s Luther Tatum. Two years ago, Tatum and some friends decided to unplug from the 9-to-5 rut and risk going into business for themselves. Attending his third NAMM show, selling bottleneck slides for playing blues music, Tatum said it’s a risk he recommends.

“It’s not that you’re necessarily going to be successful, but the choices are ominous: What are you going to do, work for somebody until they decide you’re not?”