Winter NAMM 2015

Michael Britt Profiles

NAMM is a great place to hook up with people you first met through the Internet. Michael's profiles for the Kemper Profiling Amplifier has taken the Kemper world by storm as they are immediately playable no matter if you use IEM, FRFR, studio monitors or headphones. I'm very fond of what is known as the Dumble sound and have been trying to get that for years. Therefore I felt priviledged when Michael asked me to beta test his Dumble profiles. The profiles are great and just as powerful, smooth and dynamic as I have always wished for.

Thing is, all the collaboration was done via the net so it was great to finally meet and have a chat about lots of things. Now I'm eagerly awaiting his Friedman BE100 profiles.

Michael Kelly

Michael Kelly just got into the superstrat genre with some good looking models.

Mike Lipe

Interesting design, mixing woods, hardware and electronics from many different guitar types.

The figure on the top of this Virtuoso is just insane.

The back is nice too!

Mike showing of a mahogany body, maple top J-style bass.

Moog

Have a complicated rig? Think you have a lot of cables? So do I. At least that's what I thought until I saw this Moog system. I do wish I could get these sounds out of a real electric guitar. Absolutely awesome!

Morgan Amplification

I first came into contact with Morgan amps by trying an AC20 profile in my Kemper and it sounds great and the dynamics are up there with the best. The real Morgan amps are worth knowing and playing.

And the AC20.

Musicvox

I have never seen anyone playing a Musicvox, nor have I ever seen one in any music store in any country. But I see them every NAMM so I guess many people buy to so they can afford the prices at NAMM. Odd looking guitars to say the least.

NAMM

NAMM from above. This is the view from the second floor balcony of the convention center. A great place for frozen Swedes to get some welcome sun. Shame to have share it with all the smokers.

Beween the convention center and the hotels NAMM is now renting out space for food trucks. Tried a few of them and found fun food at not so fun prices. All tasted great so it's still worth it. And I've paid far more for far worse food. Every year at the Frankfurt Messe easily comes to mind.

The Mex Cola was new to me. Tapped in Mexico and using real sugar instead of all that artifical sweetning stuff, I found it very much more to my liking than regular Coke.

We weren't the only ones enjoying the food.

Neuman

Neuman is well known for their microphones and now they are getting into studio monitoring. This KH120 sounded really good and I would like to test them in a studio to get to know them better.

Nik Huber Guitars

Nik Huber had a blue theme this year at NAMM. I simply love all his designs here.

I've never seen a tele/P90/P90 configuration before but found it to be a cool combo. Playability of the guitar is undisputedly up there with the very best.

A NAMM show report without a picture of Nik holding a guitar of his choise is simply not an option. So here's Nik!

Premier Builder's Guild

PBG President Brian Swerdfeger and designer/luthier Dennis Fano in front of some Fano guitars.

Fano goodies!

Saul Koll has a shape that I think fits all types of configurations and colors.

A beautiful flame top that the picture doesn't come close to doing justice. Was very hard to photograph in the blue light.

Saul Koll with a semi hollow archtop goldie with three Filtertron pickups.

The Akoya was the latest new amp from Two-Rock. I seem to enjoy all the amps Two-Rock come up with.

People

After having been to a numer of shows in Anaheim and Frankfurt you realize you are seeing quite a few people at these places. After a while some of them becomes aquaintances and after still some more time some become your friends. After 30 Frankfurt shows and 15 NAMM shows I now have a number of people I love to meet and thus NAMM is as much a social gathering as it is a trade show. But there are also people I don't know but still enjoy meeting. And then there's music. Lots of it! The pictures under the People caption is a mix of people I meet.

Alec Lee, one of the founders of The Gear Page, is one of the power people in the new media domain that I caught checking out some new stuff.

Two of my favorite people at NAMM. Industry legend and superbly funny guy Craig Anderton and drummer Chritoffer Nermark.

I have no idea who these people are but they had fun hair-dos so I asked for permission to shoot and I did.

Nobody has been able to offer a reasonable explanation as to why people dress up like these warriors do to walk around at NAMM. Really elaborate dressing up that is! I find it hard to walk the halls all day in ordinary shoes. I would be on pain killers for a week if I attempted four days at NAMM in that foot wear.

While technically not "people", this guy came up to us one morning when we enjoyed a lovely outdoors breakfast. Sorry, no fish! I could try to pull a joke about Fishman but that would be lame, so I will refrain from doing that.

As I said there's music to be listen to. In IK Multimedia's booth there was a jam with some awsome players. These guys play with household names like Prince, Stevie Wonder, Celine Dion, etc.

One evening there was an outdoors concert with the band "No Wonder". The name is a statment that their usual singer, Stevie Wonder, will not be with them that evening. So the entire Stevie Wonder band on stage with guest artists driven by the drummer Stanley Jordan and bassist Nathan Watts. They did almost only Stevie Wonder songs sung by a number of guest singers. None of whom I had heard of before, but all performed excellently in the spirit of the orginal artist. And the band was totally out of this world awesome. The groove was so intense I almost hurt my knees just by standing there.

PreSonus

The new channel strip RC500 from PreSonus will almost certainly find its way into my studio rack. I like PreSonus.

One of the resons I like PreSonus, besides StudioOne and nice heardware, is this man and what he represents at PreSonus. A committment to education. John Mlynczak is the Education Market Manager and we have long and interesting talks about the importance of developing the methods used in music education in order to captivate the younger generations to come and open their eye, ears and minds to the wonderful world of playing and creating music.

Although separated by an ocean and quite a few years in age, John and I have remarkably similar views and our Swedish ESME project (Entrepreneurial Skills through Music Education) would not be the same without John's support.

If you're interested in how to redifine your work according to the SAMR model, you should get in touch with either of us. John's in the US and I'm in Europe. Have laptop, will travel!

PRS

True to tradition of their own making, PRS presented a new PRS Dragon guitar. Only to be made in a limited numberthis guitar uses only the best material PRS has been able to source.

Gary Grainger is one of my favorite bass players and he always puts out a good sound. Here's the Gary Grainger Signature bass.

Researh Assembly Workshop

RAW has a interesting design idea. Make a guitar with an exchangable top. Remove the strings and put a new top on it. Why, you may ask? Many reasonens actually. You may want a different pickup and electronics configuration or you may be vain and want a top that matches your shirt. Whatever the reasons, you have it here.

Here are a few tops.

Reverend

The Reverend Reeves Gabrels Signature sports these strange looking humbuckers with a blade for the wound strings and pole pieces for the unwound strings.

Rickenbacker

There was once a movie called "The Land That Time Forgot". I do think Rickenbacker was concieved in that land.

RJM Music

As an answer to the pleading of many guitar players RJM has released the Mastermind PBC. This pedalboard controller is extremely capable of controlling your pedals and MIDI gear while preserving signal integrity.

Sheri and Ron Menelli holding up their new Mastermind PBC.

Rock Box

The Rock Box company represents a number of different product lines. One of these is Chris Campbell Custom Guitars. I didn't get the chance to try them, but they look nice.

Rock Box also have their own line of pedals.