by Alissa Ordabai
– Sr. Columnist —
Stone Deaf FX is a small English firm that started just a few years ago as a family business, but it now counts Red Hot Chili Peppers and Avenged Sevenfold among its customers. This year, the company unveiled five new guitar effect pedals: Stone Deaf Syncopy (a BBD analogue delay with 500ms of delay time, modulation, tap tempo and MIDI control); Tremotron tremolo (with fully analogue signal path and a wide array of shapes such as sine, square, ramp and reverse ramp); PDF-2 parametric equalizer (which lowers the noise floor and adds an adjustable gain knob and dual footswitch for clean and dirty channels, plus expression input controls); Kliptonite (a dual velcro fuzz and overdrive pedal that splits an op amp-based distortion circuit into two halves and mixes them both back in again); and Warp Drive (which can articulate high gain like a proper high-gain amp, with parametric EQ control over the frequency range, from 35Hz to 6kHz, plus a built-in noise gate).
EarthQuaker Devices presented eight new pedals, including its first envelop filter. Other products on show were the Night Wire Dynamic Tremolo, Bows Germanium Preamp Booster, Spires Fuzz Doubler, Gray Channel Dynamic Dirt Doubler, Bellows Fuzzdriver, Acapulco Gold Poweramp Distorition and the brand new Avalanche Run stereo reverb/delay. The delay has more of a tape feel with bucket brigade vibes, and the reverb’s deep “underwater” tone is adjustable. Some of the features are reverse delay mode, tap tempo with subdivisions, assignable expression control and tails/true bypass modes. You can use delay and reverb separately, or combine them for various effects. With stereo inputs and outputs, the pedal will appeal not only to guitarists, but also to keyboard players.
Line 6, this year, delivered not only a new “lunchbox” amp that produces detailed sound via stereo speakers in a compact format (AMPLIFi® 30), but also a new processor (Helix™) and a foot controller. FBV™3 is a next-generation foot controller that allows you to save presets and gives total hands-free control of Line 6 amps and effects. Line 6 product specialists also delivered lectures/demos at the company’s spacious upper-level booth on how to develop guitar tone and how to use various effects. The number of attendees grew from just a few on the first day of the show to full house on Saturday and Sunday.
Speaking of education, a barrage of activities were offered from Day 1 of NAMM. The Intellectual Property Forum ran for two days and was facilitated by the IP Academy of NAMM and representatives from the Patent and Trademark Office. IP roundtables continued through Saturday and Sunday. The NAMM Idea Center also presented a dozen events each day with a focus on entrepreneurship and business development.
NAMM TEC organized a number of fascinating lectures under the TEC Tracks umbrella, including “What Audio Product Specs Don’t Tell You” and “Futuristic Control Surfaces: The Multidimensional Realm of Next Generation Instruments.” Not to mention plenty of lectures on composing, sound technology and lighting. Celebrity speakers, such as engineer/producer Eddie Kramer (of Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix fame, among other things) added to the buzz.
Evening music performances at the Hilton and the Marriott hotels heated up the party atmosphere, with top-liners such as dUg Pinnick, but also countless of up-and-coming musicians who were grateful for a chance to play for such a diverse music industry crowd. Californian wine flowed freely and new friendships — not to mention business deals — were struck during the show’s after-hours.
It was impossible to catch up with all the musicians with whom Hardrock Haven has ties or to review all the instruments and gear the website is interested in, but we paid attention to instruments endorsed by the players whose music we love and to products we, personally, would like to own. When it’s all said and done, the beauty of NAMM is that each attendee is a musician — even if it’s a business person or a journalist. This is the reason why NAMM stays famous for its atmosphere of community and camaraderie and why it is always such an electrifying experience to come to Anaheim each January for four insane days of work, entertainment and revved-up excitement.
All photos appear courtesy of Alissa Ordabai.
