NAMM Show unveils innovative new instruments, gear and technology
Bigger is undeniably better for the NAMM Show, whose 117th edition opened Thursday at the recently expanded Anaheim Convention Center and runs through Sunday.
Produced by Carlsbad, Calif.’s nonprofit National Assn. of Music Merchants, the members-only trade show this year features more than 7,000 brands, made by a record 2,000 exhibiting companies, from more than 120 countries and regions. At least 400 of those companies are making their debut at the show, whose attendance is expected to easily top last year’s record-high 106,773.
The products on display range from ultra-traditional saxophones and banjos to electric violins built almost entirely with 3-D printing technology, a battery-operated wireless guitar amplifier and virtual reality music products designed for non-musicians. Fender Guitars is bridging the new-old divide with its debut line of vintage foot pedals and its American Original Series of electric guitars and basses designed to resemble and play like classic Fender instruments from as far back as the 1950s.
The addition of the convention center’s new ACC North Building provides an extra 200,000 square feet for the NAMM Show, which now covers nearly 2 million square feet in the center and adjacent hotel ballrooms. The new, three-level building is devoted largely to professional audio companies.
The expansion has also resulted in a well-tuned reconfiguration of the show, which now features what NAMM Chief Executive and President Joe Lamond describes as “musical neighborhoods” of like-minded companies and products. And has led to the show’s incorporation of several other trade shows and events held by other organizations, including the Audio Engineering Society, the Entertainment Services and Technology Assn. and the Parnelli Awards, which honor achievement in the live events industry.
At Thursday’s show-opening “Breakfast of Champions” session, the NAMM “Music for Life” award was presented to Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir. His signature SS D’Angelico Guitars model won honors at the 2017 Summer NAMM Show in Nashville, and he has now partnered with Pigtronix to create the Bob Weir’s Real Deal Acoustic Preamp.
Accepting his award Thursday, Weir said: “If you have faith in your muse, you’re going to get somewhere — if you put shoulder to the wheel.”
Just how many new and established companies will have their faith celebrated — or tested — at this year’s NAMM Show remains to be seen. But their creative muses were clearly at work.
Here are some new products that caught our eye.
3Dvarius (Toulouse, France)
New product: 3Dvarius
Suggested retail price: $7,000
Online: www.3d-varius.com
Billed as the world’s first electric violin created by 3-D printing technology, the 3Dvarius is available in both four- and five-string models. Made of liquid resin, it weighs little more than a pound. The design was inspired by a classic, centuries-old Stradivarius, and has some twists.
The 3Dvarius’ tuning pegs have been moved from the top of the neck to the bottom of the instrument’s body, near the tailpiece. The silver pegs and gold pickup are the only parts that are not transparent. When amplified, it produces a bright, full-bodied sound. The visual appeal is enhanced by an engraving in the body of the French definition of music. An English translation is available upon request.
Survios (Culver City)
New product: Electronauts
Suggested retail price: $20 to $40
Online: survios.com
A virtual reality tool modeled partly after the web game “Plink,” Electronauts is designed to allow interactive users to experience mixing, remixing, composing and performing on several instruments. Expected to be on the market by summer, it can be played simultaneously by two people in the same room or thousands of miles apart.
Using a VR headset and two Oculus touch hand controllers, users “play” a highly visual game that is designed, in the words of one of its creators, “to make someone who is not a musician feel like a musician and a superhero.” What results falls midway between the video games “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” and the movie “Tron.”
MS: Guitars by Michael Spalt (Vienna)
New product: The Fisherman and His Soul guitar with amplifier
Suggested retail price: $37,300
Online: www.michaelspalt.com
The design of this art gallery-worthy electric guitar was inspired by Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Fisherman and His Soul,” and the accompanying Apache amplifier has a small, book-size drawer.
This one-of-a-kind guitar’s pickup is housed in an antique hairpiece, and two antique bisque dolls are embedded toward the bottom of the instrument’s maple body. How it sounds is perhaps less important than how it looks. Or, as a company representative put it: “This goes beyond being a musical instrument and becomes a canvas you can hang in your living room.”
Lava Custom Modern Instruments (Riga, Latvia)
New product: The Black Amber Drop guitar
Suggested retail price: $80,000
Online: lava-drops.com
You can look, but you’d better not touch, unless you buy it first. The eye-popping price for this eye-popping guitar explains why its designer, Rapolas Grazys, wears white lab gloves when he takes the instrument off its stand. It took him one year to build.
The guitar is made primarily of 4.4 pounds of Baltic black amber. Its ultra-thin, 5-millimeter body was designed to let light shine through from the front and back of the instrument. Its other parts are made of gold, silver and titanium. It is, Grazys says, “a piece of art that is meant to be played.”
george.varga@sduniontribune.com
Varga writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
