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GALLERY: Summer NAMM 2011 - Day 2 Editors' Picks

Cool gear from the floor at Summer NAMM 2011

Ansir Music shows off a new Avandaro 5-string bass at Summer NAMM 2011. Every ergonomic Ansir instrument is carved (no CNC) from exotic woods and is measured and designed to match each particular player.

Check out our other galleries from Summer NAMM: Day 1 - Day 3

Day 12 of Stompboxtober means a chance to win today’s pedal from LR Baggs! Enter now and check back tomorrow for more!

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Classic guitar face, courtesy of the author.

Ever watch a video of yourself playing guitar and wonder why you do “that thing” with your face?

When I was 16, my parents came to see me play in a bar. (Montana in the ’80s was pretty cavalier about the drinking age.) On a break, I sat with my parents, and my father said, “Boy, you really move your mouth a lot when you play. Why do you do that?”

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John Mayer Silver Slinky Strings feature a unique 10.5-47 gauge combination, crafted to meet John's standards for tone and tension.

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For the first time in the band’s history, the Dawes lineup for Oh Brother consisted of just Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith (left and right).

Photo by Jon Chu

The folk-rock outfit’s frontman Taylor Goldsmith wrote their debut at 23. Now, with the release of their ninth full-length, Oh Brother, he shares his many insights into how he’s grown as a songwriter, and what that says about him as an artist and an individual.

I’ve been following the songwriting of Taylor Goldsmith, the frontman of L.A.-based, folk-rock band Dawes, since early 2011. At the time, I was a sophomore in college, and had just discovered their debut, North Hills, a year-and-a-half late. (That was thanks in part to one of its tracks, “When My Time Comes,” pervading cable TV via its placement in a Chevy commercial over my winter break.) As I caught on, I became fully entranced.

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