NAMM, July 1999
© Frank Ford, 7/28/99; Photos by FF, 7/23/99
Here's a little photo album of the show. . .
It's been nearly thirty years since I attended my first NAMM show. (NAMM is the national association of music retailers, manufacturers and distributors.) At that show, band instruments and pianos dominated the scene.
The Nashville Convention Center is a big place, and this weekend it was filled with musical instrument displays:
Basically, guitars were everywhere:
Well, almost:
The west coast Martin sales representative is Joe McNamara, left:
He showed us (Richard Johnston and me) the latest Martin models - 23 new ones this year alone! That makes a total of 106 Martin models in the catalog right now, by the way.
Here's Richard checking in with our pal, Chris Martin (right) the seventh generation head of the Martin Guitar Co.:
Just down the isle, Santa Cruz Guitar Company introduced their special commemorative Y2K model:
It's a fingerstyle guitar with fancy koa back and sides, and, as you can see, a classy year 2000 inlay.
Way back in 1969, Rick Shubb designed the first Gryphon logo, which we used as an inlay on our custom instruments. Today, he's best known for the Shubb Capo, the favorite of musicians everywhere. He tells me they've sold a million capos so far! Rick's also one of the best banjo players around:
Over at the Taylor booth, there was a great video tour of the factory, featuring Bob Taylor describing their new neck joint in detail:
