NAMM show at the Anaheim Convention Center

To all the uninitiated NAMM stands for the National Association of Music Merchants. They hold the music gear equivalent of Coachella with a 4 day music gear festival. After hitting the press room for some Krispy Kremes, the trumpets sounded and the gates to NAMM opened. My first stop was the Buchla booth. I was careful not to drool over the beautiful analog synths. If you have ever seen the Nine Inch Nails video for "The Hand That Feeds", Alessandro is tweaking a Buchla synthesizer. I included the video above to give you an idea of the crazy sounds it provides. I cruised by the VHT booth to tell them that Helmet was using their backline and that Page's VHT pitbull amp has a mean growl. My next visit was to the Korg booth to check out the new Kaoss Pad 3 and the new R3 Vocoder/Synthesizer. Some of the Kaoss pad improvements were the inclusion of a USB connection and an SD memory card slot to store your presets.They also had a new Korg 2007 Analog Collection with the Mono/Poly added to the arsenal of old school software synths. The Moog booth was impressive as they had more Moog Voyagers then Roger O'Donnell! The Gibson booth upstairs had an amazing SG Silverburst that looked as stunning as my Les Paul Custom Silverburst. There were a flock of people at the Fender booth which was showcasing the legendary Eddie Van Halen replica guitar that will be available in spring 2007. Boss had some cool branded emulators of amps in the form of a pedal(Fender '65 Deluxe Reverb Amp, and a '59 Fender Bassman). Cruised by the Digidesign booth to see Los Lobos playing a short set and causing a large traffic jam. I went by Z.Vex effects campground and had the pleasure of talking to Zachary Vex. He was featuring the awesomely named "Box of Metal " distortion pedal. He also mentioned the Ringtone pedal had added a tap tempo function making even sicker sounding(in a good way). Also check out the video above featuring Scot from Audionova shredding. I later went to see Darker My Love play a fiery set at the Orange County Museum of Art.