The dust has settled and the UG team has returned home, dazed and confused by the sheer magnitude of NAMMage that was thrown our way. As you've seen in recent NAMM posts, there were so many guitars, amps, accessories, picks and kazoos swirling around that we were only able to scratch the surface of what NAMM had to offer. But with 93,908 total registrants for NAMM 2013, you can imagine how crazy the event was.
We trudged along attempting to see all that we could, stopping to catch brief glimpses of veteran musicians like
Uli Jon Roth,
Michael Anthony (
Van Halen),
Alex Skolnick (
Testament),
Victor Wooten, the dudes from
Foreigner, and
John Stamos (?)... I thought perhaps my tired eyes had deceived me, but no, John Stamos was in fact at NAMM for reasons beyond me.
Other Day 3 highlights included a press conference from Peavey Electronics in which Alex Skolnick and Michael Anthony tooted new Peavey amps for 2013; a lunch crowd was treated to a better-than-average Beatles tribute band performance in support of the John Lennon Tour Bus; and the neon-lit Fender room almost made everyone shift their sexual orientation toward inanimate objects. All in all, it was a solid event.
I must say one of the most pleasant aspects of walking around the NAMM halls this year was hearing people's overwhelmingly positive reaction to Ultimate Guitar! More often than not, I'd engage in conversation with someone by stating that I was covering NAMM for Ultimate Guitar, only to hear s/he excitedly respond, "Oh no way, I use that site all the time," or "I've been going to that site for years!" At one point, I had a chance to catch up with Periphery's Mark Holcomb - super nice dude - and he was completely stoked that you guys voted Periphery's latest album, "Periphery II: This Time It's Personal" as #1 on our Top 10 Albums of 2012 list. I told him you all said "'sup?"
UG definitely had its fair share of fans at NAMM and we can definitely make our presence even more significant next year. Thanks for following our daily coverage of NAMM 2013, and for those interested in a more detailed summary of NAMM, keep your eyes open for a full comprehensive first-person account of the event toward the end of this week, plus a wrap up of some of the coolest new pieces of year from this year's NAMM Show.
By Zach Pino
