Acoustic Guitar at NAMM – Sunday, January 17 and Wrap Up

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Comment by Doug Young on January 21, 2010 at 12:47pm

There were lots of great performances going on at NAMM. Here's Thomas Leeb performing in the Lowden booth:

Thomas Leeb Peformance

Comment by Charles Saufley on January 19, 2010 at 4:25pm

As Dan said, NAMM is all about inspiring people to create music. And yes, with all there is to see and hear, it can be a little bit crazy. But for all the (over)stimulation, I saw scads of great guitars and gear that had me itching to play and record right off the plane from Southern California.

Guitars, guitars, guitars. I played a lot of 'em! But I was especially keen to see what manufacturers were offering up on the more affordable side of the price spectrum. And I was not disappointed. The Loar brought back one of their most attractive guitars, the shapely, compact LH-200, which is inspired by Gibson's Pre-War designs at just $524 list. And while the big news at Recording King was their Schoenberg-designed models, they also introduced their own very affordable, Pre-War-inspired model in the shape of the Classic Series 12-fret 000—featuring solid Sitka spruce and mahogany construction, tortoise binding and a slotted headstock for just $329 list.

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It seems like the Godin family of brands offers up an affordable gem or two every Winter NAMM, and this year was no different. One of the most fun, attractive, and sweet sounding guitars I encountered was Simon and Patrick's Woodland Pro Parlor H6—a lovely little solid spruce and mahogany number that lists for just $769.

Simon and Patrick's fellow brand under the Godin umbrella, Norman had their own beauty in the $750 list range in the shape of the ST 40 Folk, a sweet-sounding solid cedar and mahogany folk-sized guitar with slotted headstock.

All these mentions of tonewood reminds me; the most interesting use of rosewood had to be the Fishman Aura-equipped Fender Telecoustic, I mentioned on Friday. Check out this close-up.

There were plenty of more-conventional acoustic-related electronics and accessories on the affordable end of the spectrum. Vox dipped its toes in the acoustic amplification market with its tube-driven AGA-70 which lists at just $550, while Roland added the 30-watt AC-33 ($558 list)—which can run on eight AA batteries—to its AC family of affordable amps.

Korg demonstrated its Sound on Sound "unlimited track recorder" which features an onboard condenser mic, 16-bit recording capability, and 100 onboard effects. Price (as well as exactly how many tracks constitute 'unlimited') was not disclosed. Though it looks like a very impressive and capable little unit. Tascam, as they often do, unleashed a host of new digital recorders, including the ultra-slim DR-08 portable digital recorder and the super-small DP-008 eight-track Portastudio ($299 street price), which you can use to multitrack your band before uploading the tracks to your computer. It even features a built-in mic for building up multi-track tunes one track at a time without external mics.

Thought that was it for guitars? No Way! In addition to the Koa F-50 that Teja mentioned on Friday, Guild also unveiled a Limited Edition GAD-40 in Antique Sunburst and a Limited Edition GAD-30PCE. You can see all three in this shot taken at the always lively Guild booth.

Headway Guitars, which made noteworthy, uh...headway in the American market in recent years had a few new-to-the-states models on display, including this beautiful sunburst, slope-shouldered dread.

And while we don't see their guitars as much in the USA these days, I'm always excited to see what legendary German manufacturer Hofner has on display. Here's a German-built cedar- and spruce-topped classical that I had the pleasure to play amid the relative quiet of the show's opening hour.

Hope you've enjoyed this edition of adventures at NAMM! Stay tuned for more from my NAMM-going colleagues.

Comment by Scott Nygaard, Senior Editor on January 19, 2010 at 3:12pm

After four days on the NAMM floor, I’m a bit shell-shocked and sore-footed, but the weekend was full of cool music and interesting new products, and there was little or no sign that we were in the midst of economic hard times. The general feeling seemed to be, “Phew, we made it,” and people were happy to be showing off lots of new instruments and gear. The fact that many booths were regularly packed full of dealers and buyers was a great sign. Here are a few more highlights of my NAMM weekend:

Huss and Dalton displayed a “distressed dreadnought,” a new guitar that has been made to look old. Gibson has been doing this with some Master Model F-5 mandolins, but this may be the first traditionally built guitar to suffer from intentional premature aging. Jeff Huss said that the idea came from a customer who wanted a new guitar for his son, who plays on the streets of San Francisco, but that he didn’t want it to look new. A little compressed air and some minor abuse, and you have a new guitar that you won’t be afraid to haul out to the campground picking session and that shop owners won’t be afraid to hand over to clumsy customers.

The PRS Quest for Tone event Saturday night, in which guitarists Tony McManus, Martin Simpson, Cody Kilby, and Ricky Skaggs alternated licks on vintage Gibsons and Martins with their own PRS models, was an interesting if inconclusive exercise, but I was most impressed with the sound of the PRS when plugged in. After the comparison demo, McManus and Simpson played a couple of duets, followed by Skaggs and Kilby, and their PRS’s amplified sounds, plugged straight into a PA, were some of the best I’ve heard. In general, the PRS guitars stood up well to the vintage comparisons—although they’re really different animals than a Martin D-28 and Gibson J-50. For my ears, the 1930s 000-28, provided by Eric Schoenberg, was a clear winner in terms of complexity of tone, but the difficulties of tuning an 80-year-old guitar, which were demonstrated when Simpson and McManus tried to put the 000 into alternate tunings, pointed out the benefits of a contemporary neck, at which PRS excels.

While it’s often hard to tell just what an instrument sounds like on the NAMM floor, I’m looking forward to encountering these instruments, to name just a few, in a more acoustically friendly environment in the future:
LAG Guitars’ Tramontane Series
The 12-fret 00 cutaway Takamine Tradesman TF740FS
Tanglewood’s Rosewood Reserve Series
Taylor’s Eight-String Baritone
A Collings Adirondack and Madagascar rosewood dreadnought that’s on its way to AG for review
The Schoenberg/Recording King cutaway 0 and 00
Blueridge’s new 12-strings and tenor guitars
Fabio Ragghianti’s Radical Classical
LPD Music’s Larson Brothers’ Czech-built Maurer model