Summer NAMM 2004, Page 2

		Fender's booth was sprawling and had the typical dizzying array of Strats. On the far right you can see some of the concept pieces coming out of the Custom Shop. Very cool...but who is going to buy them? Oh, right...collectors. On the right you can see the very cool relic Strats. We went to Gruhn's and saw a relic Strat that listed for $4300...done by some Russian guy. With all due respect...it wasn't worth $4300. Mr. KK thought the GuitarAttack T-Style looked more relic than that Strat! On the left you can see a posse of Shoreline Gold relic Strats. Pretty impressive. What really got us going was the Gretsch wall. Boy, those guitars are cool, and we really liked the product line. Did we mention how Fender treats it dealers? Check out the Opinion Page for more on that.

		Mr. Van Halen has an exclusive deal with Peavey, right? Not really... Here are a couple of EVH Charvels that were the rage. Fender owns the brand now. Click here to read more about it. I wonder if Eddie is in some money trouble?
		On to the Peavey booth. Didn't Eddie promise allegiance? Here are the new Peavey Jack Daniels guitars. Not bad...the line also has an amplifier. Our man on the inside at Peavey told us that Hartley is trying to leverage the marketing mite of Jack Daniels and use it to sell some gear. Well...good luck. I think you've already ruled out the church crowd!

		On the left you can see some very cool custom finished Wolfgangs. The flame jobs, particularly on the fingerboards, looked pretty cool, and were well done. We can't recall whether or not these were American-made. I wonder if Mr. Van Halen is going to jump ship on Peavey like he did with Ernie Ball? On the floor was the brand new Joe Satriani amp, the JSX. NAMM is not a good place to figure out the nuances of a new amp -- it is like a three-ring circus and probably louder. We could tell that it has monster gain, and it is a good looking amp. Pretty expensive, though. We'll do a full test soon.

		My favorite boutique builder was Gadow Guitars from Durham, NC. Click here to see their website. Very, very nice folks and beautiful guitars. This guy is Ryan Gadow who is president of the operation. We had a very nice chat with him, and we wish him the best of luck in the guitar business. We are going to drive to Durham to check out their shop.
		As usual, Ibanez had a killer display. Here are four of our favorite guitars...conveniently placed in a nice column! The new Destroyer is on top, followed with an Iceman (John used to play a Paul Stanley Iceman back in the day), an Artist, and a Jet King. We love the Ibanez stuff...keep up the good work!
		Dude....Washburn! An entire wall full of blunt instruments. Dimebag rocks! To be fair, they probably had the worst booth position in the entire show, and it made it tough to make a good presentation. Wait 'till Indy!
		These are synthetic bodied guitars...no wood here. The sales guys were kind of bragging that no wood went into making these guitars in a kind of Bonnaroo, environmentalist kind of way. In our opinion, wood is the renewable resource, not petroleum-based resins. What do we know?
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Click here for other Summer NAMM 04 pages: 1, 3, 4, 5