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NAMM 2013 Editors' Picks - Day 3

PG Editors pick their top gear from the third day of NAMM.

PG Editors pick their top gear from the third day of NAMM. See everything from day 3 in our photo gallery.

L.R. Baggs Lyric Pickup
LR Baggs new-at-NAMM Lyric acoustic microphone system impressed us with its unobtrusive design, but blew us away with it's super-organic, natural tones and feedback resistance.

Bourgeois Aged Tone
Bourgeois Guitars brought his new Aged Tone flattops to NAMM. The guitars are built with wood that's 'baked' to effectively catalyze the seasoning process. They look vintage indeed, but the sound leads us to believe that Bourgeois is really onto something here. This mahogany and adirondack OM is joined by slope shoulder and standard dreadnoughts in the line

EarthQuaker Disaster Transport SR
We couldn't be more stoked to get home, plug in, and find out what EarthQuaker Devices new Disaster Transport SR will do. With tape-like bright (300ms) and dark (600ms) delays that can be run separately, in parallel or in series, reverb, and the ability to create multi-head style delays (just for a start), we should be occupied for quite some time.

Crafter Lite Castaway
Crafter Guitars always builds guitars of exceptional quality at really affordable prices. The new Lite Castaway acoustic electric is more of the same--compact, comfortable, stage ready, and plays great for under $500.

DBZ Barchetta
DBZ Guitars showed off a slew of new basses at NAMM 2013. This Barchetta SM5 model features a spalted maple top, a Babicz Guitars USA bridge, and an EMG Pickups 35DC/34P4 configuration.

Traynor Small Block Bass Amps
Built for the working or practicing bassist, Traynor Amps unveiled their new Small Block series of bass amps at 2013 NAMM. Offering 1x10, 1x12, and 1x15 models, all feature 4-band EQ with a low frequency expander, active and passive instrument-level inputs, and an XLR balanced DI output.


Diffusion Audio Quiver Q505A
Diffusion Audio was showing off the new Quiver Q505A amp system at NAMM 2013. Built with bassists and acoustic guitarists in mind, the Quiver Q505A allows players to take the studio to the stage by allowing them to choose from over 300 preamp, EQ, compressor, and effect modules—up to five at a time.

RainSong Parlor
Available in both a 12-fret and 14-fret version, RainSong Graphite Guitars introduced their new Parlor at NAMM 2013. Like all RainSong guitars, the Parlor uses the company's Projection Tuned Layering, and this little beauty is stage ready with its Fishman Acoustic Amplification Prefix electronics and built-in tuner.

Crazy Tube Circuits Paradox Amp
Crazy Tube Circuits pedals from Greece made their NAMM-show debut this year, and they brought four way-cool new pedals—an optical compressor, an updated Ziggy overdrive, the all-analog Time delay, and a fantastic-sounding analog modulation. But here we're showing their new amp, which was one of the most unique and dynamic-sounding boxes we heard at the show. The single-channel Paradox isn't just powered by EL84s—it uses two of them in its preamp and one as a phase inverter, too. The result is a tone that's articulate, sparkling, and gritty, but with tons of loud headroom. The left-hand input reduces output to 12 watts for a spongier, more laid-back tone, while the right-hand output spanks out 18 watts that you can also add boosted mids and treble to via an rear-panel toggle.

Baudier Guitars Roadster
Another NAMM newcomer, Baudier Guitars, brought several head-turning models this year, including this rad-looking Roadster. It features a custom-painted alder body, a 25.5" scale, body-mounted Baudier humbuckers, a triple-truss-rod maple bolt-on neck, a graphite bridge, a kill switch, and a 4-way pickup selector with split-coil settings.

Jam Pedals Big Chill
Super-cool Greek stomp company, Jam Pedals brought its new Big Chill tremolo to the 3-ring circus that is NAMM. It features square-, sine-, and triangle-wave modes, a footswitch for selecting between two different speeds, and a third footswitch for engaging a "chop" effect. You can also control depth and speed in real time via two separate expression-pedal inputs.

Electro-Faustus Guitar Disruptor
NAMM's Hall E (the downstairs section where future legends and plenty of crash-and-burn companies tend to start out) is often referred to as "Land of the Misfit Toys," but in the case of newbies Electro-Faustus, that's a compliment. Their new EF103 Guitar Disruptor is what they call a hybrid overdrive/octave/oscillator, but basically it's a beastly-sounding fuzz. (We're hoping they also take our idea to add a 1/4" input to their fun Drum Thing box so that guitarists can slap it on their pedalboards to create percussive mayhem with it.)

Viktorian Guitars El Grace
Viktorian Guitars elegant-yet-racy new El Grace guitar features composite construction and a dual-chambered body. Weighing in at about 4.5 pounds, it features vintage-voiced Viktorian humbuckers that yield an ES-335-like sound. Controls include volume and tone, as well as a bass-rolloff knob for variable control of the feedback that semi-hollowbodies often get at high volumes.

Decibel Eleven Pedal Palette
Decibel Eleven's Pedal Palette has four effects loops and allows the player to swap pedal order instantly as well as assign pedals as parallel or series. A Tails control allows delay and reverb tails to continue after the effect is switched off.