Unique and Unusual Gear at NAMM
Here’s a few products from this year’s NAMM trade show that were surprising, unique, or just downright silly:
Geek
- Blogging
- Electronics
- Gear Diary
- Geek
- Gigs
- Guitar
- Guitar Circuit Wiring
- Guitar Potentiometers
- Guitar Preamp Cable
- Guitar Tone Capacitors
- Guitar Treble Bleed
- Korg
- modwave
- Music Production
- Other
- Pedal Building
- Photo and Video
- Semi-Hollowbody Electronics
- VOX AC15
- Wave Away
- Wavestate
- Wood
New CTS Guitar Pots
When I met with the friendly CTS guys at the NAMM trade show, they talked up their new 450G series of guitar pots. Compared with the EP086 pots I’m used to, these 450G pots have slightly lower torque when turning. The CTS rep said this is due to less contact surface area on the underside of the pot, as you can see in this photo (EP086 on left, 450G on right).
Another of the primary goals of the new 450G pots is to address part numbering confusion. The rep told me that EP086 is an AllParts number that CTS stamps onto the pot. It’s really a series 450 pot made specially for AllParts, but there’s no cross reference back from EP086 to a CTS part number. The rep told me that CTS builds guitar pots a bit differently than they do commercial/industrial pots, so they internally assign a different 450 part number, built special/custom for the ordering customer. The customer (like AllParts, Mojo, DiMarzio, etc) can have their own part number (like EP086) stamped on the pots. The new 450G series will hopefully help to standardize this part numbering, making it less confusing to the average guitar-geek like you and me 🙂
The datasheet doesn’t appear to be up on the CTS website yet, so I had the rep send it to me. Here it is.
Electronic Components at NAMM
Aside from getting to see a bunch of cool instruments and musicians at the NAMM trade show, I also got to geek out at the electronic components booths!
My buddy was laughing at me while I grilled the CTS guys for details on their pot manufacturing, some of their new guitar pots (the 450G series, and the new enclosed precision pots), why they don’t make standard DPDT push/pull pots, and why all the different CTS distributers put their own part numbers on the components (no good answer – it’s like buying mattresses!)
Fun times visiting CTS, Bourns, AllParts , Gotoh, Alpha, and Electroswitch:
NAMM 2010
I’ve just returned from this year’s NAMM trade show in Anaheim (that’s the National Association of Music Merchants). Interesting, fun, exhausting – not necessarily in that order 🙂 There’s lots of cool stuff to share, which I’ll post over the new few days.
I saw and played some interesting and amazing instruments and met the artisans, luthiers, engineers, and designers that made them. They’re all there trying to get their ideas out, and hopefully make deals with retailers to carry their products.
As a software engineer for Korg R&D, I wasn’t there to make deals. I had a couple meetings, sized up some of Korg’s competitors, visited a lot of old friends, and generally browsed around getting inspired. I’ve been to this show nearly every year since 1994, and I always come away with some new energy and motivation (that is, after recovering from the soreness and dehydration).
It’s hard to describe the scale of the NAMM show. It’s HUGE. And there are just hoards of people of all kinds there- hip rockers, metal heads, punkrock girls, nerdy engineers, synth geeks, pinup girls, celeb lookalikes, and even a few business suits. The official stats say there were 87,569 registrants present.
I also saw a few gen-u-ine stars. I walked past Joe Satriani and Slash, who were signing autographs for insanely long lines of fans. Jordan Rudess always seems to be everywhere at once – really, I think he has cloned himself. I got to hang out with synth pioneers Dave Smith and John Bowen. I watched Joey DeFrancesco play some effortlessly incredible organ, Richard Devine do his knob twiddling thing with Ableton Live, and of course a number of lesser known (to me) musicians who ranged between total suck, and amazing.