Barry Wood's NAMM Oddities 2014 Edition

 Packrat Barry

Guitars

Serious Woodshedding

Initially this caused me to be suspicious of the luthier classes at Musician Institute, they assured me that this was just an eye-catcher created for NAMM. Well played MI.

  • Musician's Institute
  • 6752 Hollywood Boulevard
  • Hollywood, CA 90028
  • www.mi.edu
Musician's Institute

It Was a Graveyard Smash

Once again the Coffin Case booth was hosting the work of Jason Obery. Classic monster movies seem to be a recurring motif.

Oberly Airbrush Studio

Not For The Faint of Wallet

All that glitters is not gold but in this case it may as well be. The "Aqua Marine" guitar on the right can be yours for a paltry $29,999.

If that's too rich for your blood, the "Blue Dragon" (on left) is only $14,049.

Ritter Bass Guitars

Talk About Mud Flaps

…my gal's got 'em. And now so does my guitar.

Steve Clayton, Inc.

First Time Ink Catalog

The only thing missing is a couple of Asian characters that actually mean something other than what you think they mean.

Fender Custom Shop

Fighting for Liberty

ESP has a twofer this year with a guitar depicting a warrior woman poised to attack, and another with a woman wielding a spear.

This isn't the first time that the art of Frank Frazetta has crossed over into music. His work has graced the covers of albums by Nazareth, Yngwie Malmsteen, Wolfmother, and most famously, Molly Hatchet.

  • The ESP Guitar Company
  • 10903 Vanowen St., Unit A
  • North Hollywood, CA 91605
  • (800) 423-8388
  • www.espguitars.com
The ESP Guitar Company

Inlay Gone Wild

As you might expect, this level inlay work requires cubic dollars.

Minarik Guitars

Not Really Like an Onion

The word Ogre brings to mind images of enormous creatures, which is appropriate for this solid metal guitar. Even with the substantial cut out it was a weighty beast.

  • Ogre
  • Seogeun-ri 205, Paltan-myeon,
  • Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea
  • 445-914
  • www.ogre.kr
Ogre

Trio de Force

After a nine-year absence, McSwain returns to the Oddities with a vengeance.

I was sucked into their booth by their vintage 'Vette guitar, but once there, the oil can-skinned guitar and flying V dragon guitar (with light-up LED eyes) made it well worth the stop.

McSwain Guitars

Perfect for the Land Fillharmonic

If you're not satisfied with a guitar that simply has an oil can top, you can step up to these relatively inexpensive oil can guitars.

Upstairs I saw excellent companion amps for these guitars.

Bohemian Guitars

As American as Full-Auto and Flying-Vs

You can get magazines loaded with different guitar effects or even a wireless transmitter. Peacekeeper has also figured out some way to get enough juice to power a vacuum tube overdrive unit.

The Peacekeeper

6-String Lite-Brite

This can be used as a "paint by numbers" system to learn songs on guitar. Even more interesting, they publish an iOS SDK so that third parties can develop apps that can control the lights and use fret and string events to trigger external hardware or software.

Incident Technologies

Pick Up The Pieces

I suppose they could sell this guitar as a kit to hit that narrow demographic of guitar-playing jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts.

Leader Music

Guitarmor

The look of the underside of this solid aluminum fret guard is a dead giveaway that someone from the aerospace industry was involved.

Brian Ostosh uses a CNC process to make fret guards and entire guitars out of milled blocks of aluminum.

Ozztosh Guitars

Simply Rife with Innovation

Alquier is obviously not content with going with the tried and true. Each of their instruments used innovative materials and had unique shapes.

Alquier Guitars

The Non-Carbon Fiber Guitar

Blackbird has been making carbon fiber guitars for some time now. Since the company is smack dab in the middle of the Mission District of San Francisco, it makes sense that they would pursue an eco-friendly alternative to carbon. The result is their Ekoa composite that uses plant fiber (no, not those plants).

The guitar you see there went from drawing board to complete instrument in less than a month, which is quite impressive.

Blackbird Guitars

Long And Winding Road

Apparently this is a guitar that Jimi Hendrix gave to Larry Lee some time before the famous Woodstock performance.

And apparently, Hendrix asked artist Alan Aldridge to paint a guitar for him shortly before Jimi's death in 1970 so it never happened.

Years later Aldridge was commissioned to paint Larry's guitar and the circle was complete.

Flying Mojo, LLC

For Fans of C20H25N3O

Most of the guitars I saw in the Wilkins booth were of the "pretty" ilk, but this one jumped out at me for obvious reasons.

Wilkins Guitar Finishes
Next Up: Other Goodies

©2014 Barry Wood