If you’re a musician, walking the floor of the NAMM Show is like taking a trip to Candy Mountain.

All the latest music gear gets trotted out at the massive industry expo in Anaheim, California. We’re talking five or six football fields worth of the newest guitars, amps, basses, drums, mikes, keyboards, sousaphones, electric oboes — think Guitar Center cranked up to 11. It’s pretty intense.

What follows is a list of the coolest, most creative stuff we saw at this year’s NAMM Show in January. These aren’t in-depth reviews, but we did get to play with, touch and listen to scores of different products, including everything shown here. If we were cut from lesser moral cloth, these are the things we would have smuggled out under our overcoats.

(Oh, the NAMM name? The show is put on by the National Association of Music Merchants.)

Above:

Minarik Lotus Double-Neck

Guitar maker M.E. Minarik is known for his wild designs, but this gorgeously lysergic double-neck version of his classic Lotus takes the space cake. The looks are outrageous: The mother-of-pearl binding, fretboard inlays and the intricately carved figures of Hindu gods and goddesses had us wishing we’d brought the bell bottoms and the incense.

The Lotus is all mahogany under the quilted maple top, so the gold Tone Perfect pickups give off a nice, warm, Gibson-style sound. Standard, Chinese-built Minarik Lotus models start at around $500. This fitted out, fully custom, U.S.-built double-neck version runs upwards of $3,500.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Moog Taurus 3



Few instruments scream “Prog Rock Explosion” louder than the Moog Taurus. The 13-note, foot-controlled synth-bass pedal board (like those found on organs) powered the low end for ’70’s prog champs Rush, Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd. The fat, stadium-rumbling low-frequency tones of the vintage units have been faithfully recreated by Moog Music, and are supplemented in the Taurus 3 by 52 additional factory presets and 48 user-programmable presets.

This thoroughly modern steel-and-wood update (which costs $2,000) also has full MIDI capability and gobs of digital and analog ins and outs. Moog is only making 1,000 of them, so you’ll have to act quickly if you want to ace that cover of “The Trees.”

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

DPA 4099 Instrument Mike

If you have a Martin guitar, vintage Getzen trumpet or some other priceless instrument you want to set up for performance or recording, look no further than the Danish Pro Audio 4099. DPA has crafted what is essentially a tiny shotgun mike and fashioned it to a gooseneck mount and a padded clamp that’s safe enough for the most beloved of axes.

We heard this mike get up close and personal with an upright bass at NAMM. It was clear, vibrant and well-rounded — way better than a pickup. Plus, for $600, you can avoid having to drill holes in your old wood.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Burriss Amps



Low-powered “Lunchbox” guitar amps give you gritty, toneful sounds at civilized volumes. They’re also lightweight, portable and inexpensive, so it’s no wonder they were all the rage this year at NAMM. Burriss amps are handmade in Kentucky, and they’ll impart a bit of that bourbon-and-barbecue vintage rock ‘n’ roll vibe into anything you play through them.

Designer Bob Burriss makes two models, the smooth and glassy Royal Bluesman and the hotter, drier Dirty Red (around $1,000 each). Both are Class A, 18-watt hand-wired boxes with six tubes inside. The Royal Bluesman has vibrato and reverb built in, and the Dirty Red has a special output that can power your pedal board.

Photo: Jim Mewithew/Wired.com

Fender G-DEC 3



Fender’s tiny G-DEC 3 amp packs a busload of tech into a small practice rig for the budding bedroom guitarist. It has an on-board digital effects unit that lets you dial in literally hundreds of different sounds. Go from Dimebag to Django with a few twists of the knobs, or fire up one of the pre-recorded backing tracks and jam along with different canned bands.

The G-DEC 3 also comes with a USB port for hooking it up to your PC, plus software (a Fenderized version of Abelton Live) for recording and editing your own songs. After that, you can load your audio files onto SD cards and play on top of them. Get all the glory of being in a band without any of the turgid drama. 15 and 30-watt versions are available, starting at $300.

Photo: Jim Mewithew/Wired.com

Tascam DP-008 Pocketstudio

Sure, GarageBand is fun and everything, but there’s something about those old, crusty 4-track recorders we all had in the ’80s and ’90s that made recording your own songs in mom’s basement so exciting. Tascam — the company behind the iconic 424 PortaStudio — has dressed up the old classic with some 21st-century trim and given us the DP-008 digital 8-track ($300).

Hook up a mike or emote directly into the built-in pair of condensers. The array of knobs and the big jog wheel preserve that hands-on vibe. Add some on-board reverb, mix down to an SD card and send a link to @loubarlow on Twitter.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Rev. Willy’s Mexican Lottery Brand Guitar Strings

Legend has it, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top once had a backstage encounter with blues great B.B. King, who advised him to use lighter strings on his guitar. Billy’s taken that advice to the extreme over the years. He now plays extra-thin .007-gauge strings, a size so rare, he had to commission stringmaker Jim Dunlop to produce them for him.

Now, Dunlop has perfected the process for mass production and packages Gibbons’ custom strings, along with thicker gauges, under its Rev. Willy’s Mexican Lottery line. These so-thin-they’re-barely-there strings will cost about $5 a pack, when they come out later this year.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Ultrasone Edition 8



Ultrasone has been gaining major respect from studio pros and audiophiles with its S-Logic series of headphones for the last few years, but the German company is really aiming for the top of the line with these fancy cans. The beautifully designed Edition 8s are tooled from ruthenium, a sibling of platinum, and the ear pads are covered in Ethiopian sheepskin.

But the sound is what counts, and the Edition 8s are exemplary. They’ve got clear, chimey highs and punchy mids for days. Some find them too punchy — there’s no way you’ll put these on without going “woah” — and they certainly sound better at lower volumes through a proper headphone amp than coming straight out of an iPod cranked up to 10. But at $1,500, they’re made more for the Eames lounge chair than the back of a city bus, anyway.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Daisy Rock Guitars

We know these things are made for tween girls, but we just can’t help ourselves. Besides, there’s no better way to stick a fork in the eye of the jaded cynic who worships all things vintage than showing up to the gig with a $350 sparkly purple Daisy Rock.

Oh, and guess what, Mister Fancy Pants: These things are light, have thin necks that are a dream to play, and come with twin high-output humbuckers that sound freaking huge. Daisy Rock makes more-traditional, vintage-inspired designs as well. But come on — purple sparkles? We’ll take two.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Couch Straps

The intrepid crafters at Couch make their unique, handsome guitar straps out of “deadstock” materials — leftover upholstery from automotive warehouses, decades-old factory waste, vintage camera straps and old seatbelts. The materials are reinforced for durability and stitched by hand, then sold directly to the guitar-playing public through a web store.

The company also commissions silk-screen designs from hipster artists like Matty Byloos, Skullphone and Brock Davis. Everything Couch makes is vegan: The end tabs are made from vinyl instead of leather, so the straps are eco-friendly and cruelty-free. Plus, Nels Cline and Beck both use them, so we’re sold.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com