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(copied from my blog):
I went to winter NAMM this year which was very cool (unlike Nam which is hot).
Tuesday 1/17
I flew from Raleigh to LAX via Atlanta. The Atlanta airport kinda sucks but they had a Popeye's chicken place so I got to have dirty rice so that was cool.
When I arrived in LA, I was greeted by fellow JCF member Ron (RacerX) at baggage claim. Once in my rental car we thought about going to the Randy Rhoads exhibit but Ron didn't know if it was still open and calling the music department at the school just got me a "Randy who?" type of response.
So we went to Hollywood. To become stars. Heh. Not. We hit Sunset Boulevard to check out the music stores since it didn't make any sense to try and drive to Anaheim at 4pm on a weekday.
Guitar Center was suprisingly exactly the same as every other freakin' Guitar Center anywhere. The manager there was a bud of mine from back in Seattle - it was cool to run into him.
Then it was over to the Mesa Boogie store. Yep, they had a lot of Boogies alright.
Next, it was the Carvin store. I was pretty stoked to go there because I've wanted to check out the Allan Holdsworth model for a long time and they had a couple. That guitar played fantastic. It did have too many damn knobs and switches. I wasn't too thrilled with the tone though - I was playing it through the new Carvin V3 - we'll come back to this issue. All in all, a very cool store and lots of nice gear.
Then we went to Sam Ash. Man, I hate Sam Ash stores. At first this one looked like all the rest. Racks of crappy Carlo Robelli and Brownsville guitars and those dorky Guitar Research amps. Once we weeded through that sea 'o crap, we found ourselves surrounded by some of the coolest used guitars I'd seen in a store in years (before Ebay). They had unique Les Pauls, JEMs, PRSs, etc. Very cool stuff. It was still a Sam Ash though so it was very overpriced cool stuff.
Time to eat. There was a Mexican place right next to the Carvin store. Much good food was had.
We then headed down to Anaheim. I dropped my stuff off at the crappy Econo Lodge and we drove around a bit before going over to Ron's. Once we got to Ron's place he opens up the front door and cranks up his Boss Cube amp and the Marshall. Heh. I then proceeded to play all of his guitars and we jammed for quite a while - like until 1am or so. His neighbors must love him.
Wednesday 1/18
I slept in. I wish. I woke up at 6am. That sucked. So I read. I love to read and really took advantage of the trip to read quite a bit.
I cruised around Anaheim a bit and then up to Brea to check out a cool music store I'd been to a few years before called Rockit music. They had some cool stuff - I was really digging this old Fender Twin Reverb until it farted out on me. Oh well. There was a Guitar Center a mile away so I figured what the heck. Man, that GC sucked. Hard. I did find a cool healthy fresh-Mex place for lunch. Mmmm...
Then it was off to Downtown Disney. My wife and kids really like the Disney pins so I went to the pin trading store and scored some cool stuff for everyone. I went over to the House of Blues and picked up a couple pins myself - a flying V and a guitar pick. I noticed that poser from American Idol last season Constantine was playing there that night (note to self: don't go to HoB tonight).
Ron's PC has been out of commission for about a year so he brought it over to my hotel for me to take a look at. Fired it up. Beep. Beep. Beep. Pause. Beep. Beep. Beep. Pause. Beep. Beep. Beep. Pause. You get the idea. Not good. Well I did a quick Google search on my cool Sprint 6700 phone and found out that this beep sequence meant bad memory. That's easy. Ron was watching that show Lost. I don't get that show at all so I mocked it. With the PC diagnosed and Lost behind us, we cruised out for some grub. Of course it was late so nothing was open except this cool Mexican place. Yep, three meals in a row [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
Thursday 1/19
Ron was supposed to come by and pick me up to go to NAMM around 9am. At 9:30 I called and woke his sorry ass up. Needless to say, I drove in myself.
The show was cool. Todd (Tekky) and his wife Kristy (MrsTekky) met me at the Dean booth while I was snapping pics of all the badass Dimebag tribute guitars. I then went up to the Fender booth. Much cool stuff. The NAMM Jacksons and Charvels were cool of course. I got to meet Matt of Matt's Music (who got me my NAMM pass - thanks Matt). I spoke briefly with Mike Shannon and John from Jackson. Cool folks all around. The Jeff Beck Esquire was killer. Very killer.
I ran back into Todd, Kristy and Brad Kelly (XXX) a bit later. Brad was apparently visiting folks he knew at the various booths and giving them DVDs of some sort (draw your own conclusions).
From there it was over to the PRS booth where I saw Johnny Hiland demoing his new signature model PRS. Holy crap! That guy was smokin' in person. I've got his CD which is a bit weak in the songwriting department but that dude can play! I got a signed picture of him too - pretty nice.
I spent a bunch of time at the Floyd Rose booth. I love their Speedloader guitars. I hung out with JT a good bit who is Floyd's main designer/builder and installed a Speedloader in my JEM a year or two ago. The black korina V's they had were stellar. Light as a feather, played amazing, looked amazing, and sounded fantastic. I think we know where this is headed.
Then I met up with Chris (Blindmuddy) and we hung out for the rest of the afternoon. We checked out some random stuff all over the show - fun stuff - BC Rich, Warrior, etc. Chris is a badass guitar player. Seriously. He was eyeballing the Carvin stuff pretty seriously and we decided we'd hit the Santa Ana Carvin store Friday morning.
We met Todd, Kristy, Brad, and Ian (YouThinkYourFish) at the Outback for dinner. Good food, good company, good times. From there, they went to the Hilton and Chris and I tried to get into the House of Blues because Johnny Hiland was playing but it was private party so we hit the Hilton and hung out for a bit.
Friday 1/20
Chris and I hit the Carvin store bright and early. He was looking at the 7-strings and I was looking at the Holdsworth again. This time I plugged the Holdsworth into a Legacy amp and it sounded way better than when I plugged it into the V3. This one had less switches too - just a couple coil taps. It sounded fantastic. Some other dude walks in and starts playing through a V3 stack. That's when I understood what the tone problems were when I was up at the Hollywood store. Put me down as one that is not impressed with the V3 amp. Chris wailed away on a pretty sweet 7-string. Did I mention he could really play? Ultimately, we both walked out empty handed but we both ended up buying Carvin guitars later because of this experience. We grabbed lunch at El Pollo Loco. More good Mexican style food. Good stuff.
We met a couple JCF folks at noon at the Jackson area for a photo. Rudy (RudyRocker), Ron, Chris, Todd, Kristy, and myself. I took a bunch of pics of the guitars and we hung out with Rudy and his buddy Fred - very cool people. It was a pleasure. They informed us that PRS was having a show that night featuring Al DiMeola and Johnny Hiland. So Chris and I went off to seek passes. On the way out we met JR (JRE) and Pebber (never caught his real name), they already had passes apparently.
So the folks at the PRS booth kind of blew us off. Well, not kind of. They did blow us off. But, we got to see Johnny play a bit and DiMeola was there checking out guitars.
We cruised around the show a bit. Naturally, we spent a bunch of time at the Carvin booth. The 7-string Chris wanted that they had was spoken for by an endorsee. I played a Holdsworth again. Surprised?
Kahler was there - I was glad to see that. I like Kahlers.
Roland had a ridiculously large arena to display their wares (booth doesn't describe the setup they had).
We looked at the Warrior guitars much closer - I was pretty surprised to see some very lame and very noticeable flaws in both their woodwork and finishes. I know I'd be pissed if I paid the bucks for one of their guitars and got something that looked like what we saw.
Then we met up with Rudy and Fred to go to the PRS show. One problem. We couldn't find Chris's car. Imagine trying to find "the white SUV" in a Disney parking lot.
The PRS show was a blast. We saw Matt but didn't see JRE and Pebber. We saw Al DiMeola, Johnny Hiland, Pat Travers, Orianthi, Dee Snider's Van Helsing's Curse, Michael Bolton, Joe Lynn Turner, Paul Reed Smith's band, some dude I'd never heard of and can't remember his name, and the Hollywood All-stars.
Al and Johnny were just smokin'. Blazing, tasteful, and entertaining. The dude whose name I can't remember had lame songs and sang bad but was a tasty guitar player. Paul Reed Smith has a great band and he makes great guitars but he was not a very inspiring guitarist. Orianthi was very good - she's 21 and played some blazing pentatonic riffs. The Dee Snider thing was a joke. It was soooo bad. Oh well. Pat Travers kicked much ass. Much ass. Fred went nuts when Travers played. Then Michael Bolton came out. Folks, say what you want about him but the man can freakin' sing. He did a soulful R&B number and just nailed it. He let the musicians take extended solos - very gracious performer. Then he strapped on a guitar. Then Paul Reed Smith came out. Ruh-roh. They did one of those popular boring blues classics (the name escapes me). They drug it out too much. Michael was out of his league as a guitar player that night but he still kicked Paul Reed Smith's butt. Joe Lynn Turner came out. Man. That was not good. Finally, the Hollywood All-Stars came out. Man. That was not as good as Joe Lynn Turner. Still, it was a fantastic show - a good time was had by all.
Saturday 1/21
I went home. Apparently Chris went to the Hollywood Carvin store and bought a 7-string there. Coolness!
Monday 1/22
I know NAMM is over but I figured I ought close the story and say that I ordered a custom Carvin Holdsworth. It should be here in 5-6 weeks.
I went to winter NAMM this year which was very cool (unlike Nam which is hot).
Tuesday 1/17
I flew from Raleigh to LAX via Atlanta. The Atlanta airport kinda sucks but they had a Popeye's chicken place so I got to have dirty rice so that was cool.
When I arrived in LA, I was greeted by fellow JCF member Ron (RacerX) at baggage claim. Once in my rental car we thought about going to the Randy Rhoads exhibit but Ron didn't know if it was still open and calling the music department at the school just got me a "Randy who?" type of response.
So we went to Hollywood. To become stars. Heh. Not. We hit Sunset Boulevard to check out the music stores since it didn't make any sense to try and drive to Anaheim at 4pm on a weekday.
Guitar Center was suprisingly exactly the same as every other freakin' Guitar Center anywhere. The manager there was a bud of mine from back in Seattle - it was cool to run into him.
Then it was over to the Mesa Boogie store. Yep, they had a lot of Boogies alright.
Next, it was the Carvin store. I was pretty stoked to go there because I've wanted to check out the Allan Holdsworth model for a long time and they had a couple. That guitar played fantastic. It did have too many damn knobs and switches. I wasn't too thrilled with the tone though - I was playing it through the new Carvin V3 - we'll come back to this issue. All in all, a very cool store and lots of nice gear.
Then we went to Sam Ash. Man, I hate Sam Ash stores. At first this one looked like all the rest. Racks of crappy Carlo Robelli and Brownsville guitars and those dorky Guitar Research amps. Once we weeded through that sea 'o crap, we found ourselves surrounded by some of the coolest used guitars I'd seen in a store in years (before Ebay). They had unique Les Pauls, JEMs, PRSs, etc. Very cool stuff. It was still a Sam Ash though so it was very overpriced cool stuff.
Time to eat. There was a Mexican place right next to the Carvin store. Much good food was had.
We then headed down to Anaheim. I dropped my stuff off at the crappy Econo Lodge and we drove around a bit before going over to Ron's. Once we got to Ron's place he opens up the front door and cranks up his Boss Cube amp and the Marshall. Heh. I then proceeded to play all of his guitars and we jammed for quite a while - like until 1am or so. His neighbors must love him.
Wednesday 1/18
I slept in. I wish. I woke up at 6am. That sucked. So I read. I love to read and really took advantage of the trip to read quite a bit.
I cruised around Anaheim a bit and then up to Brea to check out a cool music store I'd been to a few years before called Rockit music. They had some cool stuff - I was really digging this old Fender Twin Reverb until it farted out on me. Oh well. There was a Guitar Center a mile away so I figured what the heck. Man, that GC sucked. Hard. I did find a cool healthy fresh-Mex place for lunch. Mmmm...
Then it was off to Downtown Disney. My wife and kids really like the Disney pins so I went to the pin trading store and scored some cool stuff for everyone. I went over to the House of Blues and picked up a couple pins myself - a flying V and a guitar pick. I noticed that poser from American Idol last season Constantine was playing there that night (note to self: don't go to HoB tonight).
Ron's PC has been out of commission for about a year so he brought it over to my hotel for me to take a look at. Fired it up. Beep. Beep. Beep. Pause. Beep. Beep. Beep. Pause. Beep. Beep. Beep. Pause. You get the idea. Not good. Well I did a quick Google search on my cool Sprint 6700 phone and found out that this beep sequence meant bad memory. That's easy. Ron was watching that show Lost. I don't get that show at all so I mocked it. With the PC diagnosed and Lost behind us, we cruised out for some grub. Of course it was late so nothing was open except this cool Mexican place. Yep, three meals in a row [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
Thursday 1/19
Ron was supposed to come by and pick me up to go to NAMM around 9am. At 9:30 I called and woke his sorry ass up. Needless to say, I drove in myself.
The show was cool. Todd (Tekky) and his wife Kristy (MrsTekky) met me at the Dean booth while I was snapping pics of all the badass Dimebag tribute guitars. I then went up to the Fender booth. Much cool stuff. The NAMM Jacksons and Charvels were cool of course. I got to meet Matt of Matt's Music (who got me my NAMM pass - thanks Matt). I spoke briefly with Mike Shannon and John from Jackson. Cool folks all around. The Jeff Beck Esquire was killer. Very killer.
I ran back into Todd, Kristy and Brad Kelly (XXX) a bit later. Brad was apparently visiting folks he knew at the various booths and giving them DVDs of some sort (draw your own conclusions).
From there it was over to the PRS booth where I saw Johnny Hiland demoing his new signature model PRS. Holy crap! That guy was smokin' in person. I've got his CD which is a bit weak in the songwriting department but that dude can play! I got a signed picture of him too - pretty nice.
I spent a bunch of time at the Floyd Rose booth. I love their Speedloader guitars. I hung out with JT a good bit who is Floyd's main designer/builder and installed a Speedloader in my JEM a year or two ago. The black korina V's they had were stellar. Light as a feather, played amazing, looked amazing, and sounded fantastic. I think we know where this is headed.
Then I met up with Chris (Blindmuddy) and we hung out for the rest of the afternoon. We checked out some random stuff all over the show - fun stuff - BC Rich, Warrior, etc. Chris is a badass guitar player. Seriously. He was eyeballing the Carvin stuff pretty seriously and we decided we'd hit the Santa Ana Carvin store Friday morning.
We met Todd, Kristy, Brad, and Ian (YouThinkYourFish) at the Outback for dinner. Good food, good company, good times. From there, they went to the Hilton and Chris and I tried to get into the House of Blues because Johnny Hiland was playing but it was private party so we hit the Hilton and hung out for a bit.
Friday 1/20
Chris and I hit the Carvin store bright and early. He was looking at the 7-strings and I was looking at the Holdsworth again. This time I plugged the Holdsworth into a Legacy amp and it sounded way better than when I plugged it into the V3. This one had less switches too - just a couple coil taps. It sounded fantastic. Some other dude walks in and starts playing through a V3 stack. That's when I understood what the tone problems were when I was up at the Hollywood store. Put me down as one that is not impressed with the V3 amp. Chris wailed away on a pretty sweet 7-string. Did I mention he could really play? Ultimately, we both walked out empty handed but we both ended up buying Carvin guitars later because of this experience. We grabbed lunch at El Pollo Loco. More good Mexican style food. Good stuff.
We met a couple JCF folks at noon at the Jackson area for a photo. Rudy (RudyRocker), Ron, Chris, Todd, Kristy, and myself. I took a bunch of pics of the guitars and we hung out with Rudy and his buddy Fred - very cool people. It was a pleasure. They informed us that PRS was having a show that night featuring Al DiMeola and Johnny Hiland. So Chris and I went off to seek passes. On the way out we met JR (JRE) and Pebber (never caught his real name), they already had passes apparently.
So the folks at the PRS booth kind of blew us off. Well, not kind of. They did blow us off. But, we got to see Johnny play a bit and DiMeola was there checking out guitars.
We cruised around the show a bit. Naturally, we spent a bunch of time at the Carvin booth. The 7-string Chris wanted that they had was spoken for by an endorsee. I played a Holdsworth again. Surprised?
Kahler was there - I was glad to see that. I like Kahlers.
Roland had a ridiculously large arena to display their wares (booth doesn't describe the setup they had).
We looked at the Warrior guitars much closer - I was pretty surprised to see some very lame and very noticeable flaws in both their woodwork and finishes. I know I'd be pissed if I paid the bucks for one of their guitars and got something that looked like what we saw.
Then we met up with Rudy and Fred to go to the PRS show. One problem. We couldn't find Chris's car. Imagine trying to find "the white SUV" in a Disney parking lot.
The PRS show was a blast. We saw Matt but didn't see JRE and Pebber. We saw Al DiMeola, Johnny Hiland, Pat Travers, Orianthi, Dee Snider's Van Helsing's Curse, Michael Bolton, Joe Lynn Turner, Paul Reed Smith's band, some dude I'd never heard of and can't remember his name, and the Hollywood All-stars.
Al and Johnny were just smokin'. Blazing, tasteful, and entertaining. The dude whose name I can't remember had lame songs and sang bad but was a tasty guitar player. Paul Reed Smith has a great band and he makes great guitars but he was not a very inspiring guitarist. Orianthi was very good - she's 21 and played some blazing pentatonic riffs. The Dee Snider thing was a joke. It was soooo bad. Oh well. Pat Travers kicked much ass. Much ass. Fred went nuts when Travers played. Then Michael Bolton came out. Folks, say what you want about him but the man can freakin' sing. He did a soulful R&B number and just nailed it. He let the musicians take extended solos - very gracious performer. Then he strapped on a guitar. Then Paul Reed Smith came out. Ruh-roh. They did one of those popular boring blues classics (the name escapes me). They drug it out too much. Michael was out of his league as a guitar player that night but he still kicked Paul Reed Smith's butt. Joe Lynn Turner came out. Man. That was not good. Finally, the Hollywood All-Stars came out. Man. That was not as good as Joe Lynn Turner. Still, it was a fantastic show - a good time was had by all.
Saturday 1/21
I went home. Apparently Chris went to the Hollywood Carvin store and bought a 7-string there. Coolness!
Monday 1/22
I know NAMM is over but I figured I ought close the story and say that I ordered a custom Carvin Holdsworth. It should be here in 5-6 weeks.
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