WINTER NAMM, Anaheim, CA

[Ted Eschliman]

Eddie, don't take it personally. Exhibitors always hone in on the Blue Badges (buyers). The yellow badges (visitor) will always yield to the blue when it comes to the focus of the red badges.

[DataNick]

I had a great time at my first NAMM show. What was really nice was that it's just a hour drive up the freeway from where I live, so me & a mando buddy of mine got passes from our luthier and made the trip. I played Collings, Webers and one Gibson 120th Anniversary mandolin. All were good and the highlight for both of us was in meeting Bruce Weber.

Mr. Weber was extremely friendly and obliged me in talking mando shop for quite some time. I was impressed with every single Weber mandolin I played as well. On a side note, Mr. Weber mentioned that he's going to start personally carving/graduating soundboards again. He said he'll likely carve them in Bozeman, then ship to Bend, Oregon. Great guy! and we had a blast! Always great catchin up with Eddie as well as meeting Tommando!

[Eddie Sheehy]

"and one Gibson 120th Anniversary mandolin"

After the Gibson guy prized it from your little fingers and put it back on the wall he added a note to it: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH. Turns out it belonged to a customer, so Gibson had NO mandolins with them...

[SincereCorgi]

After the Gibson guy prized it from your little fingers and put it back on the wall he added a note to it: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH. Turns out it belonged to a customer, so Gibson had NO mandolins with them...

Word. I was pretty disappointed by the Gibson room in general. They had some lovely guitars available for people to touch and try, which you couldn't hear over the godawful hair metal band onstage.

I am a little surprised you didn't like the Greek bowls, since I thought they sounded pretty good. I was much more disappointed in that Eastman bowlback.

[delsbrother]

The zouks were all out of tune

How could you tell?

[Eddie Sheehy]

Word. I was pretty disappointed by the Gibson room in general. They had some lovely guitars available for people to touch and try, which you couldn't hear over the godawful hair metal band onstage.

I am a little surprised you didn't like the Greek bowls, since I thought they sounded pretty good. I was much more disappointed in that Eastman bowlback.

I was disappointed with the Eastman bowlback too, which surprised me since I've played them before and liked them. The Eastman Dawg Models 2 and 3 were crackers...

[JeffD]

I guess I didn't know. I thought you couldn't even go to NAMM unless you were connected to the industry. I have wanted to go for years, but I thought I had to talk my local music store folks into including me as "one of them", which would be uncomfortable.

My only legitimate connection is as an end user.

[DataNick]

Jeff,

You need a "sponsor", ie someone who is willing to put you under the umbrella of their business that's connected.
There's a "jeweler" here in town who also sells used musical instruments. He gets NAMM passes; go figure!

[JeffD]

Yea that's what I thought. And I am sure my local music store folks have some kind of internal policy as to who they send to NAMM to further their own goals, and here I come asking to take one of their slots only because I want to stand and drool at the mandolins.

[DataNick]

Multiplicity of resources out there; music jounalists, non-profit foundations, recording studios etc. Mine has a multi-faceted business model of recording studio, luthier, repair-tech, artist. He asked me & my buddy if we wanted to go so, voila, we got passes.

If you can it's pretty cool and being in SoCal in Jan is great weather usually. LMK if you get connected next year and if you make the trip, I'll put you up.

[Marcus CA]

I was pretty disappointed by the Gibson room in general. They had some lovely guitars available for people to touch and try, which you couldn't hear over the godawful hair metal band onstage.

I missed out on that hair metal band, but there were plenty of people playing in that room with plenty of volume. I asked one of the Gibson reps why there were no mandos, and he said it was because mando production was still really lean after the flood. I was surprised by that, since if you want to revitalize the market for an established product, that was the place to do so with at least a mando or two.

Of course, Weber had enough mandos alone to fill the void --- especially if you also wanted to explore the mando family instruments. That resonator OM was my absolute favorite. Most of the mandos that I played had serial numbers indicating birth in January 2015, but they already were opening up nicely.

[MikeEdgerton]

Back when I was selling a lot of instruments on eBay each year they offered me the passes to attend NAMM. I don't know if they still do or not, I stopped selling on eBay when they devalued the feedback system for the sellers.

[WireBoy]

I had a good time at NAMM. never enough mandolins... I had a nice chat with Mary Weber. Thank goodness their booth and Breedloves instruments were tuned. They all sound great. Eastman's were very nice too. Although I'm not sure about arch top ukuleles though. I didn't get to touch the 120 anniversary Gibson because of that note.... I did see Ted E talking business with some folks. Collings always has great pieces on display. My highlight of the week was a demo performance at the Nord booth, Rachel Flowers, blind 13 girl just made their B3 organ style keyboard wail! She was doing 70's Keith Emerson stuff, then Boston's Foreplay. Something special.

One other note, It's very sad when you stop by a vendors booth and their display instruments are out of tune. The folks above were fine, there were some others vendors that were disappointing. when something catches your eye and you want to give it Just a little test to see where it lies on the tone spectrum and- clunk-. It's just puts you off. But other than that sour bit, It was another nice year.

[SincereCorgi]

Okay, the only new mando-ish thing I didn't see mentioned: Gold Tone's new octave mandolin banjo.



It actually sounded good, and would make a useful instrument in backing up fiddle tunes. The latest in Gold Tone's grand plan to put every instrument's neck on every other instrument's body. Next year: sitarlele.
e.



And that's yet another shot of that row of low Webers. Best Weber thing I played was a Rawhide mandola, though.

[Annette Siegel]

Nowell & I covered a little bit of NAMM for our local Folkworks.org friends...

http://folkworks.org/features/featur...annette-nowell

[Ted Eschliman]

Eric, next time you see me, feel free to interrupt or throw something at me.

[WireBoy]

Ok, thanks Ted!