GALLERY: Summer NAMM 2015 Day 2
One of the most impressive amps at NAMM was 3rd Power Amps' Dual Citizen. Like the name implies it can go from a beautifully chimey British sound to a robust and spanky blackface tone. The channels can either be blended together or switched via an included foot switch. It's loaded with Mullard EL34s and weighs in at a solid 45 watts. Finally it has a mixed bus, pedal-level loop driver so you can put all your pedals after the preamp. It's available now and streets for $2750. Combo version coming soon.
Chicago's Daredevil Pedals brought the new Northern Clipper—a six-transistor silicon fuzz that's inspired to some extent by the Shin Ei Super-Fuzz and Maestro FZ-1S. The cool thing is that it strips out a lot of the less-functional aspects of those designs and concentrates on the heaps of fatness the circuit can generate. It's surprisingly versatile, with just the right amount of octave, and has a ton of range. Did we mention it sounds freaking huge and nasty? Price TBD, but will probably be around $140.
Source Audio's new modulators—the Mercury flanger, Lunar phaser, and Gemini chorus—all feature deceptively simple interfaces that facilitate both plug-and-play gratification and deep-dive tweaking. Each has four knobs, a 3-position voice switch, and continuous controller input, yet each can be edited in exponentially greater ways—including for bass- or guitar-optimized frequency response— via a slick, powerful mobile app and/or computer software.
EarthQuaker Devices shared a mother lode of new stompboxes. The Dunes is a condensed version of the 808-inspired Palisades, the Interstellar Orbiter is a dual-resonant filter that can do everything from wah emulation to a rotary speaker effect, and the Levitation is a vintage-voiced reverb reminiscent of somewhere between dirty '60s chamber, classic spring, and the ringing plate reverbs of yesteryear.
Any vibe fans out there? McCaffrey Audio debuted the Run Rabbit Run, a deliciously wobbly chorus/vibrato that uses a modified photocell. The Crazy switch pushes creates a wild stuttering oscillation effect. Available in September for around $250.
First-time NAMM exhibitors BP Rose Guitars came to Nashtown with the down-home 'n' handsome Max 135, a 24 3/4"-scale semi-hollowbody with a laminated flame-maple top, carved mahogany body with center block, set neck, and the East Grove Village, Illinois, company's own humbuckers.
McPherson Guitars brought the lovely Maple Leaf to NAMM. It has an Engelmann spruce top, figured-maple back and sides, cocobolo fretboard, bridge, and headstock overlay, hand-cut maple-leaf inlays, and luthier Matt McPherson's unique 3-piece overpass/underpass bracing.
Mad Professor Amplification's new-at-NAMM Simble Predriver gives you two levels of very fat pre-drive or clean boost (it sounded especially lovely in front of a dirty Simble overdrive.) The Evolution Orange enables you to achieve the effect of rolling back your volume knob while bumping the midrange and sculpting the bass and treble. Counterintuitive at first, perhaps, but very effective and versatile. Price TBD on both.
Seymour Duncan's new Apollo 4- and 5-string Jazz pickups ($95 each) feature parallel linear wiring to add a little oomph and definition to the J recipe while also decreasing extraneous noise. The 5- string version is available in 67/70 mm and 70/74 mm models.
Nashville's Original Fuzz brought a cache of killer new straps to NAMM. They use Peruvian fair trade, hand dyed wool weaves and Indian stamped cotton. They work without a middleman, so the revenues for the materials go straight to the textile makers--making these straps not only ethically super-cool on the international trade side, but comfy and super unique. The Indisn print models are 60 bucks and the Peruvian models are 85 bones. Really beautiful stuff and great dudes to boot.
Warwick & Framus came to NAMM with a couple of 4- and 6-string hot shots. The Warwick Corvette $$ (Double Buck) has a lovely colored flamed maple top, swamp-ash back, wenge neck and fretboard, and wood-knobbed tuners, as well as passive MEC humbuckers and switchable active/passive preamp with master volume, balance, treble, and bass controls. The Framus Mayfield is made in Germany and features a mahogany semi-hollow body with center block, and Seymour Duncan P-90s.
Trev Wilkinson is a tinkering genius. And his Fret King guitars always seem to offer some cool, unexpected twist on a classic. Or in the case of the Esprit III several twists. This candy apple red ripper, which fuses Firebird and Fender offset design cues features stacked P-90s, five way pickup selector with Fret King's Vari Coil tone control, Maestro-style vibrato, and Wilkinson roller bridge. This thing generates about a gazillion killer tone flavors. And the price is pretty fair too at $1,249.
The TonewoodAmp combines several effects (delay, reverb, tremolo, auto wah, overdrive), EQ, and MIDI capabilities in a relatively small package that attaches to the back of the acoustic guitar via magnets. The amp "excites" the body of the guitar and the effects come through the soundhole along with the natural tone of the guitar. It will be available in September for $199.
Greer Amplification came to Nashville with both a Black Tiger and Hammer in hand. The Black Tiger delay features an analog signal path with a digital delay repeater circuit and was designed to have the warmth and feel of vintage delays with some added touch sensitivity and slight grain on the repeats. The Hammer brings the nasty with textures that range from gnarly Texas rock distortion to squashed-out, almost cut-off fuzz. Both are $199 street and will start shipping once the Greer crew gets home.
DLS Effects showed off the brand-spankin' new RotoSPIN. This rotating speaker emulator allows the player to dial up multiple rotary cab sounds and mic distances through the tweeter intensity and bass rotor level, and the switchable overdrive section adds grind, edge, and OD clipping like old rotary tube amps. $259 street.
TC Electronic's Bodyres, is a dead-simple little acoustic enhancement box built in the company's popular mini enclosure. The single knob called "body" fattens up and adds character to thin sounding piezo output. A smart $99 purchase if you've been fighting the limitations of a cheap piezo system or like to reshape your output a touch switching between acoustics onstage.
Mike Matthews and the Electro-Harmonix gang brought three new stomps to Music City this week. The Bad Stone updates the classic phaser with a manual mode that lets you park the phasing at any point within the sine wave. The Silencer has standard noise-gate controls, plus a release knob that tailors the amount of acceptable noise for a sound and responsiveness that better matches your rig and style. And the 22500 Dual Stereo Looper has a slew of cool functions, including automatic loop-length matching, SD card storage, octave and reverse modes, XLR input for simultaneous instrument-and-vocal looping, drum loops, and more.
These two Guild Starfire basses! Yikes! The sunburst Starfire on the right honors Byrds bassist extraordinaire Chris Hillman. It's got a mahogany body and neck and a fast-feeling 30.75" scale neck with a Byrds logo inlay at the 12th fret. It's a blast to play and brings the boom with a single BS-1 BiSonic pickup. (Street $1,499.) The $1,299, two-pickup Starfire II is also new at Summer NAMM. Beautiful stuff!
TV Jones debuted the new Spectra Sonic Standard at NAMM this week. Available Bigsby B7-equipped or not, these matte-black beauties feature chambered alder bodies, set-in maple necks topped with rosewood 'boards, and TV Jones T-Series Spectra-Flux pups.
Cordoba Guitars' new España 55FCE Negra flamenco guitar is built in Spain by master luthiers and features stunning Macassar ebony back and sides for a street price of $1,700.
Henretta Engineering brought the beautifully small Moody Blue reverb to NAMM. Not only can it fit on even the most crowded pedalboards but it also has a trio of internal trim pots to adjust decay, wet signal, and dry signal. The result is a mostly spring reverb with a touch of a hall vibe. Available now for $175.
Ibanez Guitars just showed us a trio of new Talman Prestige models that produces everything from Nashville-approved country spank to robust rock tones via the Seymour Duncan pickups. They will be shipping in November and will start at $1199.
Here's the legendary Reeves Gabrels (of The Cure) demoing the Reverend Guitars Double Agent OG. It features Reverend pickups (humbucker and P-90) along with their signature bass contour control. They are available now for a very affordable $749.
Designed to be a straight-up rock machine, Nikita Guitars debuted "Wilma" from their new Stone Age series at NAMM. It's a relic'd double-cutaway axe that's loaded up with Bourns pots, Sperzel locking tuners, and a single Dylan Pickups DAF (Dylan Applied For) 7.8k unpotted humbucker. $1,500 street.
Seymour Duncan also came to NAMM with the Dave Murray Loaded Pickguard ($329 street), which features the veteran Iron Maiden axe-slinger's pickups of choice for the last 15 years or so—two Hot Rails and a JB Jr. It's available in pearloid, black, and white.
Park Amps brought two really nice-sounding heads to NAMM. The Little Head 18 (top) uses the same preamp as the venerable P45, but has a rad self-biasing power section that accepts 6V6, 6L6, EL34, and other octal tubes—including rectifiers—without modification. Meanwhile, the EL34-powered, two-channel Rock Head 50 was inspired by the '70s Park Rock Head, but adds extra flexibility with a switchable cascading gain stage, and a cathode-following tone stack.
RainSong Graphite Guitars came to NAMM with the new Smokey series, which features a smooth, noise-free satin finish, 12th-fret neck joint, and either an all-carbon-fiber or carbon-and-glass composite build. The SMH shown here features the latter, as well as an L.R. Bags Stagepro Element preamp, for a street price of around $1,600.
Roland U.S. is at Nashtown NAMM celebrating the 40th anniversary of their iconic Jazz Chorus amp with the release of the new JC-40. This 40-watt stereo amp still brings the famous “JC clean” tone and long-respected signature chorus effect, but also includes evolved features for modern players like enhanced onboard effects and a front-panel stereo input.
TecAmp's Gear brought an ingenious new cab to NAMM. Outfitted with 10" and 12" drivers, plus three kinds of tweeters—a 4" paper cone, a horn, and a neodymium-magnet tweeter—the MTS features three 3-way switches for selecting any combination of these high-end drivers (or none) at full or half engagement. The result is an astonishing variety of sounds perfect for everything from warm, thumpy R&B to Jaco-style soloing, bright funk snapping and popping, and much, much more.
Washburn Guitars' new Woodline series is probably the best-sounding affordable line of acoustics we've heard so far at NAMM. They range from $299-$399 street, and the higher-end WL020SCE shown here features a solid Sitka spruce top, laminated rosewood sides and back, Graphtech Nubone nut and saddle, and Fishman Isys+ electronics.
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