This page is a review of the 2012 NAMM show with a few of the photo's we took. You can see ALL the photos on our Facebook page here; https://www.facebook.com/Eurotubes on the Photos page. The most asked question? "Hey, how was NAMM?" Well, it was again HUGE, lots of fun, exhausting, educational and something we look forward to every year. What was different this year was that the crowds were not so dense with young children darting and squirting in and out all around you and lining up for what seemed like miles at artist signings. This was good. NAMM has increased the restrictions on age and the number of "visitor" badges that retail and wholesale NAMM members are allowed. Attendance was by no means small or light, in fact it was higher than last year. This year 95,709 people registered and attended, but the walkways, booths and displays seemed a little easier to access for the most part. The second most asked question is "what was the best thing you saw?" The answer? The NAMM show. Guitars and amps for miles, thousands of pedals, speakers, keyboards, mic's, rack gear, recording gear, PA gear, drums and anything and everything that is music. It is quite the experience. This year all of us here at ET were present, Eddie, Jay, Michael, Aaron and me made the journey. We also had two guests this year, Jay's girlfriend Holly and a life long friend of mine Jim Songer. Jim as a master plumber was instrumental in the construction of the new ET building we moved into last year. He is also a guitar player, and part of my payback to him was an expense paid NAMM holiday. It was good to have you aboard Jim! Aaron and Jim were first time NAMM attendees and both were blown away at the spectacle that is NAMM. We always meet with the good folks from JJ Electronic to discuss business and talk about what should be next in the way of tubes. One of the tubes we ask for last year was a good 5751 and I'm happy to say that we have the first prototypes of the JJ 5751 in hand and we will be testing and listening to them over the next few days. Jay is conspicuously absent from most photos, he and girlfriend Holly made their own way thru the show. We go out to dinner with JJ after the show and we always pass a huge Magnolia tree on the way back which is just behind the convention center. I searched for the biggest one on record and I didn't see any this big! JJ is always working toward improving quality and brought online their first automated assembly machine a few months ago. It is used for installing the internal components into their preamp tubes such as the ECC83S, ECC81 and others. This improves the accuracy and alignment which improves the consistency. Over the next few month they will bring online their first laser welder for assembling the anode plate structure. This will reduce the amount of heat during the welding process thus decreasing warpage. One of our scheduled stops was Blackstar. We get a lot of questions about these amps, however the support has been zero... We cannot get schematics and all requests for information are unanswered. I wanted to see if we could get hooked up with one of their engineers and after conversations with two Blackstar reps I was finally given contact info for the head engineer here in the US, so will see where it leads. I sure hope they are willing to support their products, their amps sound pretty darn good. VOX was again highlighting the Heritage Hand wired amps and if you want the VOX sound, these are the ones. Their guitars play pretty good too! Traynor had some nice sounding new additions and brought back the YGL1. Huger & Kettner had the spotlight on the Tommy Thayer head, the Coreblade and their little amps. And then there is Bugera, are the photos below a Mesa Mark series combo and a Triple Rec or Bugera amps? Where will it end? Or will it? Below Michael and Aaron check out the Bugera sound room. Mesa Boogie decided not to show up at NAMM this year. Bruce Egnater told us that he had so many requests for more gain in the Tourmaster and the Rebel and Renegade series amps that he finally decided to say "OK". So he built the "High Gain" versions of all the amps! You can see them in Black. They sounded very nice, they definitely had more gain and a slightly more compressed sound gained up. However the clean channels were still real good. Orange has been busy! Here at Eurotubes a number of us are Orange fans. I have one of their AD30TC heads and 2/12 cab, Eddie has the original hand wired OR50 and 4/12 and Michael has the Dual Terror and 4/12. Orange now issued the OR50 as a production amp and a new OR15 along with the new Jim Root #4 Orange amp and a new Micro Terror. Most all are coming from the factory with JJ tubes. Speaking of Jim Root Michael ran into him at the show, photo below. Good friend Jim was a bit in awe at the display! Diezel was using the JJ KT77's in their Hagen and the VH4! In fact we saw a lot of amps now using the JJ tubes from the factory. Marshall had things setup a little different this year and we really missed the large sound rooms they have had in the past, always fun to crank a full stack in 15'X15' room! This year Marshall was concentrating on their new 1 watters with the JTM, JVM, JMP, DSL and JCM. 1 watters just don't excite me... No NAMM trip is complete without a visit to the PRS display. Even though I'm not particularly fond of the sound, MANY player are, and you have to give PRS credit for building amazing guitars, the fit and finish really is second to none. This was Aaron's first NAMM show with us and straight out of the gate he spotted one of his favorite players, George Benson, Aaron just had meet him! Carvin unveiled their new Legacy 3 which seems to have spawned from the V3 and they decided to build the amp in a small metal case rather than the traditional wood cab. So it's 100 watt amp in a very small package! It sounded good and was obviously a bit more versatile than than the two channel Legacy's. Ampeg came out with a new line of guitar amps called the GVT series. They are higher gain amps based on 6L6 and 6V6 power stages, and they rock! The Heritage R12 was also outstanding. A few of us stopped by at an Eric Johnson signing. Eddie who is in the brown shirt showed Eric our prototype Eurotubes all-in-one bias probe meter, Eric was very interested in it and actually signed the bottom of it with a gold pen! A Jet City amp made in England? Yup! Not only made in England but also hand wired. Check out the photos, it's the new Earhart 50, of course it'll cost you a cool $2500.00 to own one! When it comes to larger manufacturers of acoustic guitars Taylor and Breedlove are the big boys. A trip thru both displays to fondle some of the best guitars was definitely necessary! Taylor Breedlove We always stop in to see Bob Burriss, builder and purveyor of mighty fine amps, and all around good guy! Now these are the lunchbox amps with real soul!   We attended one of the NAMM workshops featuring the big three , Jeff Berlin, The incredible Stu Hamm and the master of all things rock and roll when it comes to bass, Billy Sheehan. Even if your a guitar player, a keyboard player or a drummer and you have not seen these three on their BX3 tour, you MUST go! Here are a few fun photos, if you want to see all of them they are on our facebook page here; https://www.facebook.com/Eurotubes

NAMM 2012