I thought I should start a thread like this since we have one from winter NAMM 2004
.
OK, I was there yesterday(2nd of April 2004) and here is my impression of things.
The Ibanez booth :
Well actually it wasn't Ibanez but their German distributor Roland Meinl. The big letdown for me here was the EP7. Doesn't look very good, the top looks like it's faded a bit but the thing is very very light. Joe's JS1200 on the other hand looks freaking great and so does the JEM7VWH
. They only displayed very few RG models which sucked a bit but what they had was still very nice
.
The Laney booth :
Now here things where fun. Mattias AI Eklundh and Christophe Godin gave demos of Laney amps every 2 hours. Mattias played his grey Caparison guitar (looked very boring, I had hoped he would play the orange one). He showed a few things you could do with guitar, he played around with a dildo and a cheap toy handy. Also what surprised me a bit was how he did his harmonics. Often it sounds like he uses a
whammy pedal but actually he just slaps the strings a bit and uses the bar to create the effect very very nice indeed
.
The Dean booth :
Some very nice guitars and some butt ugly ones especially this neon green one with matching neck YUCK
. Michael Angelo also gave demos every two hours, he played stuff from his new dvd plus his twin neck also very very nice
. He looked a bit silly with those spandex pants and that hair (looks like a wig) also he gave autographs afterwards.
The Gibson booth :
Nothing really interesting here except for the hideoust Les Paul of all time IMHO. It was green burst of some kind going to gold again YUCK!.
The Washburn booth :
I went there just to see Nuno's signature model and discovered something a bit strange. In the specs sheet on Washburns webpage it says that the guitar has a Schaller licensed Floyd Rose on it. But if you looked at the model they where showing it had an original Floyd Rose saying "Floyd Rose".
The Fender booth :
Propably the biggest booth, they had Charvel, Fender, Jackson and Gretsch guitars there. I tried out Yngwie's signature Model and that thing is quite different. It took me quite a bit to get a good grip on it but bending on that thing is like butter
.
The Peavey booth :
Some rather nice Wolfgang's but that was it for me. There was a demonstration of Joe's new JSX amp, sound really nice too.
The Ernie Ball booth :
Just a big let down, almost missed it so small was it.
The Tausch booth :
Gitarrero (jemsite member) showed his
custom guitar by Rainer it looked really nice. He played a few harmony licks along with some other guy when I was there.
The Soultool booth :
I just mention them because I saw (I think at least) Roger Staffelbach guitarist in Artension there.
What surprised me a bit (since this was my first time there) that there where quite a lot of guitar manufactures from Korea and China. They had some really guitars but when you came close and looked at the hardware especially the trems they all looked like LO TRS II
. One of these companies had a triple neck there with a really nice top. Plus there was guitar with a monkey grip but the body had a shape like the S-series
.
If anyone else was there give your comments about the Musikmesse!
