PG editors Shawn Hammond, Charles Saufley, and Rich Osweiler pick their favorites from the last day of the show. See everything we saw in our Day 4 photo gallery.
Gibson 12-string ES-335
Among the many awesome new, period-correct instruments from Gibson Memphis—including several 1959- and 1963-centric semi-hollowbodies—is this fantastic 12-string ES-335 outfitted with Burstbucker 1 (neck) and Burstbucker 2 (bridge) pickups.
Andrew White Gypsy Jazz-E
West Virginia acoustic builder Andrew White Guitars brought a whole line of impressive guitars to NAMM. His all-solid import flattops were impressive at less than $1,200, but the Gypsy Jazz-E shown here was what had heads turning the most. It features a solid Italian spruce top, solid curly walnut back and sides, a 1-piece mahogany bolt-on neck, and a fretboard and bridge made of ebony.
Caroline Guitar Company Kilobyte
Caroline Guitar Company's new Kilobyte Lo-Fi Delay lets you go from delicious, rockabilly-appropriate analog slapback echo to avant-garde experimentalism—or a little bit of both. Cool features include the ability to add a warm, fuzzy aftertaste to just the repeats, or you can hold down the momentary footswitch (right) to create self-oscillating freak-outs with infinite feedback.
Stenback DI box
Finnish luthier Tom Stenback brought this classy-looking bass DI to NAMM. The Lo and Hi knobs feature switchable contour sliders, and all three EQ bands have sliders for selecting the range of the knob—45-80 Hz for Lo, 400-800 Hz for Mid, and 3.5-6.5 kHz for Hi.
Immix Eleven V-Series 30
Immix Eleven Amplification completely redesigned new V-Series 30 is powered by four EL84s and features two channels. Channel one uses an EF86 and has a 6-position tone selector and a brightness cut knob, while channel two uses three 12AX7s and a 3-band EQ section. There are also master and gain knobs, as well as a colour control that lets you select the shade of the isolated LEDs that illuminate the logo panel—or you can set it to automatically cycle through them.
Bogner Atma
Bogner Amplification brought the new EL84-loaded Atma to NAMM this year. This 18-watt, 3-channel (clean, crunch, and lead) little beast boasts a 3-way switch for '60s, '70s, or '80s-style gain, voicing, and compression. Other features include the 3-way bright switch and 18/5/1 power attenuation.
MI Amplification
Australia’s MI Amplification released a quartet of classic amp-inspired 1x12 combos at NAMM 2013. Be it the Apache, Aquarius, Crystal Lattice, or the Duchess, each of these tone machines boasts a unique take on vintage sounds.
Diamond Slider
Diamond Pedals released a pair of new pedals at NAMM 2013 with their Slider and Nine Zero Two. We particularly liked the Slider, which offers a wide range of octave, interval, and detuned shifts through a unique and variable sample-rate conversion technique.
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'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.