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I will post the pix I promised from NAMM, and there are lots of them! In fact I still have not downloaded my video which is about 12 gb from the Paul Gilbert/Racer X and Andy Timmons show, Malmsteen at the Marshall booth, and Dave Larue at the Marshall booth all shredding of course 
The Gilbert/Timmons show was Saturday night. On Friday night we watched an early Van Halen tribute band called Hot For Teacher. They also had Brad Gillis come up and play Night Ranger's Don't Tell Me You Love Me with them followed by Gillis and them being joined by Izzy Osbourne for Paranoid and Crazy Train. During the song Hot For Teacher, a model from the floor went up and stage and it was like watching the video from 1984 on MTV except this model flashed the audience her assets and was promptly escorted by the Hilton Hotel Security off stage 
Happy Times 
In the meantime I will mention the highlights as I saw them:
First, Jackson/Charvel. The new display up on the 3rd floor was great! Very professionally done and not just a side show in the Fender area. Fender gave all its divisions their own space and Jackson/Charvel didn't look like outcasts. McD, Brian, Mike Kotzen, and Jay Cannela were all there attending to as many of us J/C fans as they could all weekend long and I got to meet Mike Learn and saw Dan Lawrence as I do each year. Both are super nice guys and obviously very talented with paint skills. I thought J/C had THE best looking booths of any guitar manufacturer. The Charvel area looking like a shop and working on guitars during the show was awesome too. In addition, if you were at any of the host hotels were one of the TV channels carried NAMM coverage, you saw a big increase in J/C ads running quiete frequently so obviously Fender is trying to market J/C. To the whole J/C crew that was there I say thank you and kickass job on the new display
Other cool things from NAMM: When Eventide introduced their two stomp boxes two years ago at NAMM I told them there were already plenty of delay and modulation pedals on the market. I told them they should have introduced a pedal with what they do best, Harmonizer. Well, looks like they listened to me and this year they had the new Eventide Pitch Factor pedal which I will be buying as soon as they come out at the end of Feb/early March. Its about time they did this as my Boss Harmonist is out of production and frankly sounds too garbled for live use.
As far as amps go, the ones that impressed me were Bogner and a little gem from Mesa. Bogner had creme and gold tolexed amps only at their display and featured an amp called Goldfinger. As all Bogners it sounded incredible. The Uberschall looks like it will have a new revision as they had one there that looked like the current Revision Blue but it had two additional knobs by the master volume marked in hand written ink "hi" and "lo" and it was also sporting KT88 tubes. The new mod makes the clean channel a lot more useable than before. The only way I can use mine live is to crank the gain on the clean channel or it gets burried volume wise by the distortion channel.
Over at Mesa, the big deal was the Mark V amp which I only heard a little bit but the surprise to me was the Ultra Dyne. The Ultra Dyne has many modes to its channel giving it clean, crunch and distortion and I thought sounded very nice. Wasn't expecting that.
Marshall had on display re-issued small logo JMP and JTM 45 heads and cabs. None of them were in the amp room like last year's Rhoads head so I did not hear them. The Marshall 85th anniverssary was there too. And speaking of Marshall, Paul Gilbert used two white Marshall Rhoads stacks with THD Hot Plate for his show with Racer X on Saturday night. One was plugged in and the other on standy for a back up. I got some cool shots of Gilbert live with these stacks in the background
Gibson surprisingly had a much more open policy this year. In years past you couldn't get in their booth/room unless you were a dealer or VIP and it was a small area. This year that had a large room with lots of Guitar Rig stations setup in there. You could just grab a Les Paul off the display and plug into Guitar Rig with headphones and try it out. The down side was there guitars were pretty conservative with mostly cherry/sunburst finishes. Nothing too fancy looking. They did have a Jimmy Page #2 Les Paul which was displayed from the back side only as well as some Jeff Beck models.
Over at TC Electronic the new G-Major 2 was displayed. It has improved wheels on it for adjusting parameters, allows you to tweak through a laptop interface using a USB cable, and added Univibe to the effects.
Well, those were the biggies for me. Pix will follow soon. Anyone know how and where to post video? Perhaps you guys could see the Racer X show.
The Gilbert/Timmons show was Saturday night. On Friday night we watched an early Van Halen tribute band called Hot For Teacher. They also had Brad Gillis come up and play Night Ranger's Don't Tell Me You Love Me with them followed by Gillis and them being joined by Izzy Osbourne for Paranoid and Crazy Train. During the song Hot For Teacher, a model from the floor went up and stage and it was like watching the video from 1984 on MTV except this model flashed the audience her assets and was promptly escorted by the Hilton Hotel Security off stage Happy Times In the meantime I will mention the highlights as I saw them:
First, Jackson/Charvel. The new display up on the 3rd floor was great! Very professionally done and not just a side show in the Fender area. Fender gave all its divisions their own space and Jackson/Charvel didn't look like outcasts. McD, Brian, Mike Kotzen, and Jay Cannela were all there attending to as many of us J/C fans as they could all weekend long and I got to meet Mike Learn and saw Dan Lawrence as I do each year. Both are super nice guys and obviously very talented with paint skills. I thought J/C had THE best looking booths of any guitar manufacturer. The Charvel area looking like a shop and working on guitars during the show was awesome too. In addition, if you were at any of the host hotels were one of the TV channels carried NAMM coverage, you saw a big increase in J/C ads running quiete frequently so obviously Fender is trying to market J/C. To the whole J/C crew that was there I say thank you and kickass job on the new display
Other cool things from NAMM: When Eventide introduced their two stomp boxes two years ago at NAMM I told them there were already plenty of delay and modulation pedals on the market. I told them they should have introduced a pedal with what they do best, Harmonizer. Well, looks like they listened to me and this year they had the new Eventide Pitch Factor pedal which I will be buying as soon as they come out at the end of Feb/early March. Its about time they did this as my Boss Harmonist is out of production and frankly sounds too garbled for live use.
As far as amps go, the ones that impressed me were Bogner and a little gem from Mesa. Bogner had creme and gold tolexed amps only at their display and featured an amp called Goldfinger. As all Bogners it sounded incredible. The Uberschall looks like it will have a new revision as they had one there that looked like the current Revision Blue but it had two additional knobs by the master volume marked in hand written ink "hi" and "lo" and it was also sporting KT88 tubes. The new mod makes the clean channel a lot more useable than before. The only way I can use mine live is to crank the gain on the clean channel or it gets burried volume wise by the distortion channel.
Over at Mesa, the big deal was the Mark V amp which I only heard a little bit but the surprise to me was the Ultra Dyne. The Ultra Dyne has many modes to its channel giving it clean, crunch and distortion and I thought sounded very nice. Wasn't expecting that.
Marshall had on display re-issued small logo JMP and JTM 45 heads and cabs. None of them were in the amp room like last year's Rhoads head so I did not hear them. The Marshall 85th anniverssary was there too. And speaking of Marshall, Paul Gilbert used two white Marshall Rhoads stacks with THD Hot Plate for his show with Racer X on Saturday night. One was plugged in and the other on standy for a back up. I got some cool shots of Gilbert live with these stacks in the background
Gibson surprisingly had a much more open policy this year. In years past you couldn't get in their booth/room unless you were a dealer or VIP and it was a small area. This year that had a large room with lots of Guitar Rig stations setup in there. You could just grab a Les Paul off the display and plug into Guitar Rig with headphones and try it out. The down side was there guitars were pretty conservative with mostly cherry/sunburst finishes. Nothing too fancy looking. They did have a Jimmy Page #2 Les Paul which was displayed from the back side only as well as some Jeff Beck models.
Over at TC Electronic the new G-Major 2 was displayed. It has improved wheels on it for adjusting parameters, allows you to tweak through a laptop interface using a USB cable, and added Univibe to the effects.
Well, those were the biggies for me. Pix will follow soon. Anyone know how and where to post video? Perhaps you guys could see the Racer X show.
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