Well - we are back at NAMM this year after missing the 2011 show due to a year's hiatus. This year I am at it alone and as I sit in my cheap hotel room at 8:30 pm the first night of the show, dog tired, and staring at a stack of literature that I have to go through my only thought at the end of today is - well, it doesn't seem like we really missed a year at all.
I'm not saying there isn't some great stuff this year, there is, and I'll get to that. I'm saying, however, I'm not seeing anything really groundbreaking this year that speaks to me.
THAT being said, I can say without a doubt that I had a great time walking the show floor today. I went into the first day with no real sense of direction short starting at the Pearl booth and working my way out from there. Through that journey I found myself impressed by some things, unimpressed by other's, and scratching my head at some.
Let's start out with some of the positive impressions.
First off, Pearl is reintroducing the Session series of drums, dubbed Session Studio Classics, going back to the original ply configuration of Birch/Kapur shells. Dropping the low mass lugs of the previous Sessions in favor of more traditional lugs, but keeping the low-mass floor tom legs, and optimounts, these drums will come in three finishes: Sheer Blue (below), Piano Black, and Sequoia Red.
Pearl also had a replica of Mike Mangini's current Dream Theater kit - I'd seen the video's but it's still an impressive kit to see in person:
Mapex's new Retrosonic kit is just sex in the form of a drums and is already getting positive reviews on the 'net, so this is sure to be a winner. The Orion's are now gone but I believe the Black Panther series of kits are the successors to those.
Other things that impressed me this show were both Drumcraft and Crush, and I'll be hitting their booths again tomorrow and taking more photos and seeing if I can get more detailed information about what's going on there.
A Crush kit:
Other things of note that I'll cover in more detail in the show summary article are Zildjian's Gen 16 setup of cymbals, (introduced last year, but hey, we weren't there!), Yamaha re-introducing the Hex Rack (dubbed the Hex Rack II), anything Brady makes *EVER*, and the fact that Premier is coming back....
On to the less than impressive or unimpressive or just scratching my head.
As always, Tama's lack of not paying any attention to anyone in their booth that isn't waving around a wad of cash. Getting anyone there to pay any attention to you for any amount of time unless your buying something is next to impossible. So I took some pictures and left the booth.
Mapex's new "MyDentity" branding and line. I understand the concept, I really to, but it just feels like they're trying too hard. They give us the Retrosonic on one end then this on the other:
I'm not completely sold on the new Mapex logo yet but I do think it's better than the old one.
Outside of those two I wasn't overly impressed with any of the lower end Yamaha electronic offerings pad wise (though I am a HUGE fan of the DTX500 module for it's value alone). Alesis's Realhead drums are just not responsive enough, especially on the snare side, though it could be the DM10 on the kit I spent about 15 minutes on wasn't set to be sensitive enough.
The other big thing that left me sratching my head was the DW exhibit. Or lack of one. They had one, but it was crammed into a small corner room on the second floor of the convention center with almost next to nothing on display. A Collectors kit or two, a Performance series kit, most of Bozzios kit (or maybe it was all, I've never been that close to it before), a stack of snares, and some hardware tossed in a corner. My guess is DW is in a bad spot financially but that's only supposition on my part.
*UPDATE to DW* DW did have more of a presence evidently, in a larger room behind the one room I took the photos in - however when I had asked about this I was told the larger room in the back was strictly for dealers and sales reps and no one else, and evidently a press badge wasn't enough to get in.
Overall, this year really didn't feel any different than the 2010 show I attended. I wasn't overly excited about any one product although there were several, like the new Hex Rack (II!) and the Gen 16's that were introduced last year, and Brady's drums (as always) that caught my attention and I will be going back to look harder at those. I was glad to see Pearl bring back the Session series - in my opinion it was a mistake dropping them - and although they're a very limited configuration/color setup right now I think that it will grow.
I covered a lot of ground today and haven't written nearly half of what I saw - these are just my impressions of the bigger things out there. Tomorrow will be a day where I dig a little deeper and ask more questions and give some love to the smaller companies.
So that's the first day in almost a nut shell. The feet are sore and the brain has too much info to process all at once. I'll be back on the show floor at 10am tomorrow, walkin', talkin', snappin' pictures.
Stay tuned for the "day 2 adventure"....
Tim Robinson
Winter NAMM 2010
Anahiem, CA
January 19, 2012