NAMM 2012 - Product Highlights
Every year our staff make the trip to Los Angeles in January to attend the annual National Association of Music Merchants Show. It's tough to leave Toronto in mid January but we do it anyways :) There are always thousands of new products to see and this year was no exception. Here is a short list of some of the products that we loved and are excited to bring into our store in the coming months.
This amplifier is endorsed by our good friend Phil X, a Toronto born session guitarist now living in Los Angeles. He has become pretty famous by appearing in a series of videos showing off vintage guitars sold by a company in LA called Fretted Americana. More recently he took this amp on tour with Bon Jovi when he filled in for Richie Sambora for 13 shows.
The Evil Robot is the result of a collaboration between Phil X, John Kasha of KASHA Amplification and the folks at Fretted Americana. Together, they worked together to create what Phil would call the ultimate tone. The Evil Robot is a hand made, point to point design amplifier with built in Vibrato. It comes in two versions, a modified 2/5/18/30 watt 1x12 combo and a 18/30 watt head and cabinet. Each unit is hand made and it goes without saying, sounds pretty incredible. Custom orders for the Evil Robot can be placed through our store starting immediately and will take approx. 14 weeks to be completed and delivered. Starting in May, there will be a non hand wired version of this amp, being produced in China to sell for approx. $800.
Click here to watch Phil X demo the Evil Robot .. it's pretty entertaining
If you think that this guitar looks like a Fender Stratocaster, you're right .. It is a Mexican made Fender Stratocaster that Roland has infused with its award winning COSM technology. Now before you think "Guitar Synth" hold your horses. This guitar only produces guitar tones, no moog synth sounds.
So, what is it? Firstly, you can just play this guitar like a normal Fender Strat. Beyond that though, you can flip a few switches and instantly the tone changes to imitate (really well) all different types of pick ups such as double coils, P90's etc. Flip another switch and all of the sudden you're playing a 12 or 6 string acoustic ..YUP really. Now, here's where it gets really crazy. At the touch of a button, you can tell the guitar to switch tunings. It doesn't actually physically move the tuners, instead it just changes the tuning of the output. What that means is that you have a dozen tunings at your finger tips all available immediately. Combine that will all of the various tones that you can get and boy, do you have a pile of variety. This is one of the coolest products in a long time. It will range in price around the $1379.00 which is a deal after you see what it can do.
Check out this dude playing it at the show, you won't believe what you're hearing.
Everyone knows that we love the Martin guitars over here at KAOS. To our surprise, Martin had a pretty big year with a number of new models clearly geared at the average budget in mind. In particular, they brought out 6 new models in their already popular Performing Artist Series. There are 4 levels to this series, 1, 3, 4 and 5. The 1 and 3 have been available for some time but the 4 and 5 are new. The 4 series are constructed of all solid wood materials and have a Fishman pick up system. There are a number of models in the 4 series built in the Grand Performer shape and one model in a Dreadnaught body style. The 5 series are constructed with a solid top and laminate backs and sides and also come equipped with the Fishman pickup system. Ranging in price from $899 - $1500 these guitars now compete very aggressively with the rest of the marketplace and are a dream to play.
We should start seeing these models arrive as early as the next few weeks. For more information on all of Martin's new products, Click Here
The Vox amps are famous for their classic British style tone. For over 50 years they have been at the heart of pretty much all of the UK's famous bands. In an attempt to change things up we suppose, they teamed up with American amp designer Tony Bruno to modify their famous AC30. The result was the AC30 TB which was pretty amazing, albeit a bit expensive and still quite large for many people's taste.
This year, Tony is back at it but this time with an 18 watt smaller, less expensive yet incredible sounding amp collaboration with Vox. The TB18C1 and C2 are the result and this 18 watt monster was one of the shows most talked about amps. It should arrive in our store sometime in the next month or so and will be selling for approx $750.
This amp is not to be missed. Check out more information on the Vox website here.
The Gibson booth is always a highlight of the show. Where else do you get to see every crazy Gibson guitar available in one place :) Anyhow, they had many many new models but one of our favorites was the new Les Paul Traditional Mahogany. Basically, a normal Les Paul Traditional without the maple top, mahogany instead. Sure, a little less fancy looking but still all Les Paul at well under $2000. This new price point will be a hit with many people we suspect.
Other new models included a new SG Standard with P90's .. a new SG61 Satin finish .. a new Les Paul Studio Satin Finish .. a new Les Paul Jr Satin and Gloss Finishes as well as a Les Paul Jr with special humbuckers. Watch for more information on these guitars as it becomes available. The ETA on these new instruments is 2-4 months.
Our friends at Godin have been busy this year developing new models, many which they debuted at this past Namm show.
The economical Session line of electric guitars was expanded with 2 new incarnations of itself. The Session Plus and the Session Classic. The Plus employs a new bridge and some fancy new electronics while the Classic is a new body shape reminiscent of a Telecaster with a twist on the traditional Tele pick up selection. Both of these new models were fantastic.
On the slightly higher end, Godin introduced the Core series which is a slightly less fancy version of their well respected Icon series guitars. At around $800 these instruments should be very well received in the marketplace.
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The Namm show features over 100,000 products so we can't cover them all. However, watch our blogs in the coming weeks as we continue to talk about some of the new products that will be released this year.
Bill's Blog - Lou's Blog - Jay's Blog - Ryan's Blog
Bill's Blog - Lou's Blog - Jay's Blog - Ryan's Blog