GALLERY: NAMM 2018 Day 3

Traveler Guitar Thinline Performer

Traveler Guitar entered the acoustic guitar market at NAMM with the Thinline Performer, which features a full sized shred-ready neck and a Shadow Panoflex pickup system. List is $699

Maxwatt Amps Maxwatt 400 Bass Amp

Circuit geeks! Zoom in and rejoice! This is Maxwatt's super clean, if not quite lean Maxwatt 400 bass amp. Those are twin transformers, not bookends, holding up the amp so the four KT88s aren't crushed under the weight. And the circuit is as immaculately wired as the original, uh, very high wattage amps that inspired this line. Maxwatt is taking custom orders now and expect to move the amp to production this year. It'll be spendy at around four grand. But hey, they'll hear you three states over and you won't have to worry about being lost in the mix.

Vola Guitar Ares FR BM

Vola Guitar came to this NAMM with a new bolt-on called the Ares FR BM, which is head-turning in its "tribal green" stain but also quite organic-looking and elegantly understated with the matte look. Made in Japan, it also features a burled-poplar cap on a mahogany body, a hard-rock maple neck, a 12"-radius ebony fretboard, a Floyd Rose-licensed Gotoh vibrato, and Seymour Duncan Sentient and Pegasus pickups.

Boss Katana

Unless you're busking regularly, portable amps tend to be an afterthought. But the very thorough thinking that's gone into the portable and wireless Boss Katana opens up a world of untethered playing possibilities. 30 watts of power means you can use the wireless to stroll and play all over the back 40 and still hear yourself jam. There's lots of sonic options too: five amp models, 58 effects plus Bluetooth playback so you can top sling with your sound source of choice. A bunch of fun for $399.

Bartel Amplifiers

Longtime Tone King amp designer Mark Bartel unveiled his new company, Bartel Amplifiers, and three debut models at NAMM. The Roseland ($4,795) is 45 watts and has a preamp developed by Bartel that creates three distinct British and American voices. Another of his 6L6 powered entries, the Starwood, at center, clocks in at 28 watts sans the Roseland’s bias modulation tremolo, with a $4,295 tag. And the smallest subs the others’ 12” Celestion Alnico Cream speaker for a 12” Celestion Alnico Blue pushed by 12 Watts. No reverb but a line out, and tagged at $3,295. It took Bartel a year of experimentation to develop his distinctive cab construction and he hand builds each of these point-to-point wired amps himself.

Death by Audio Waveformer Destroyer MkII

Death by Audio previewed the ferocious Waveformer Destroyer MkII at NAMM. It’s a box-of-monsters filter/boost and more that owes a debt to primitive synthesizers and owner Oliver Ackerman’s twisted sonic sensibility. Street date and price for this limited run is tba.

Joe Gore Screech Octave Fuzz

Joe Gore came to NAMM with four new stomps, including the Screech Octave Fuzz. Inspired by the Dan Armstrong Green Ringer and Ampeg Scrambler, it features a carefully tweaked circuit that offers similarly crazy overtones—only in all fretboard positions and on any pickup, not just the neck unit.

Terry Audio White Rabbit

Terry Audio's White Rabbit has been one of the real finds here at NAMM 2018. It's a deceivingly simple looking console-style preamp and boost. But the audible transformations to guitar tone are substantial and impressive--delivering the same kind of beautiful tone massage and enhancement you get from vintage board and tape preamps with the range for even more muscle, clarity, and air. The drive tones you get from the boost channel and at the top end of the preamp character control is awesome too--a really lovely, organic crunch that, like everything else this pedal does, feels like a perfect handshake between guitar and amp. On top of everything else it's beautifully built under the hood, which makes the steep-looking $275 price tag quite fair indeed.

Crazy Tube Circuits Constellation and OD Locomotive

Crazy Tube Circuits came to NAMM from Greece loaded with four new pedals including the Constellation, which dials up the grit of five classic fuzz boxes including the Tone Bender and Treble Booster, and the tube-driven bass OD Locomotive. They’re not cheap, at $321 for the Constellation and $334 for the Locomotive, but they’re well built and sound smart. There’s also the StonedHz V2, with highly controllable ring modulation and the tube amp inspired Ziggy 2 driver, which doubles up the company’s successful Ziggy.

Jennings Guitars Catalina and Voyager

Camarillo, CA's Jennings Guitars has been around about three years, but this is the company's first NAMM show. The company uses just two basic body designs, the Catalina and Voyager (seen here) but offers what seems like a gazllion custom options for each. The Voyager Deluxe pictured here is a semi hollow version of what's typically a solid body. Quality is excellent, which makes the starting prices $2,099 (for the solid Voyager) to $2,399 (for the Voyager Deluxe) a pretty nice deal. And with options from baritone configurations to Gold Foil-style humbuckers, Mastery and Bigsby trem, and a multitude of inlays, the possibilities for creating a very personal instrument abound.

Diamond Pedals F-Octave Fuzz

Hailing from Nova Scotia, where the mighty puffins dwell, Diamond Pedals has always built rock-solid, enduring stuff (the Diamond Vibrato is a longtime personal favorite). For their new F-Octave fuzz, Diamond used the Foxx Tone Machine as reference, but uses a much wider range tone control to take both the octave and the very versatile standard fuzz to more scathingly top-end heights. It's out now for $179.

Epigaze Audio Ascension Reverb

Forgive the backward metaphor, but Epigaze Audio went really deep with their new Ascension Reverb. There are, of course, no shortage of reverbs that offer modulation, harmonic, and shimmer modes. But the Ascension dies all of them really well and offers very thoughtful control's that maximize control and the expressive range of each mode. The coolest is the side-mounted pad knob which enables cool, nebulous blends and transitions between straight versions of each mode and more ethereal harmonized versions. Its got a very precise and wide taper and is easy to operate with your foot. It's a blast to work with and will be around $299 when it hits the market in spring.

Marshall Amplification Origin5

It may look like a little Plexi beamed from the amp aliens. But it's really the baby entry in Marshall Amplification's new Origin series, the Origin5. Rated at five watts, powered by a single EL34, and packing a Celestion 8" speaker in the super light cabinet, you could think of the Origin5 as Albion's answer to the Champ. But the Origin5 has a few extra features including a Tilt control that enables you to dial up tough treble heavy tones, a 3-band EQ, push-button boost, and power scaling. A pretty nice way to get a little Marshall muscle in your life for just $449.