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GALLERY: NAMM 2015 - Day 2

Check out the highlights from the second day of NAMM '15.

Godin Guitars brought some real nice-sounding, real classy-looking, real light new single-cuts to NAMM. The Summit Classic series comes in three Seymour Duncan-outfitted configurations with chambered Spanish cedar bodies and maple caps—a P-90 version (shown), a humbucker model, and a P-Rails model. Each also features Godin's unique High-Definition Revoicer circuit (activated by the black button in the recessed route), which has a pronounced and very musical effect on the EQ voicing.

Elliott Sharp is a dapper dude. Not a dandy, mind you, but an elegant gentleman.

Photo by Andreas Sterzing

The outside-the-box 6-string swami pays homage to the even-further-outside-the-box musician who’s played a formative role in the downtown Manhattan scene and continues to quietly—and almost compulsively—shape the worlds of experimental and roots music.

Often the most potent and iconoclastic artists generate extraordinary work for decades, yet seem to be relegated to the shadows, to a kind of perma-underground status. Certainly an artist like my friend Elliott Sharp fits this category. Yes, his work can be resolutely avant-garde. But perhaps the most challenging thing about trying to track this man is the utterly remarkable breadth of his work.

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Do you overuse vibrato? Could you survive without it?

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An ode, and historical snapshot, to the tone-bar played, many-stringed thing in the room, and its place in the national musical firmament.

Blues, jazz, rock, country, bluegrass, rap.… When it comes to inventing musical genres, the U.S. totally nailed it. But how about inventing instruments?

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By refining an already amazing homage to low-wattage 1960s Fenders, Carr flirts with perfection—and adds a Hiwatt-flavored twist.

Killer low end for a low-wattage amp. Mid and presence controls extend range beyond Princeton or tweed tone templates. Hiwatt-styled voice expands vocabulary. Built like heirloom furniture.

Two-hundred-eighty-two bucks per watt.

$3,390

Carr Skylark Special
carramps.com

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Steve Carr could probably build fantastic Fender amp clones while cooking up a crème brulee. But the beauty of Carr Amps is that they are never simply a copy of something else. Carr has a knack for taking Fender tone and circuit design elements—and, to a lesser extent, highlights from the Vox and Marshall playbook—and reimagining them as something new.

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