Barry Wood's NAMM Oddities 2018 Edition

 Packrat Barry

You Figure It Out

Plug and Sniff

Is there a great need for musicians to be able to sort their gear in the dark by smell? After a few gigs your cable bag is going to smell like an adventurous microbrewery.

Santo Angelo

Anti-Virtue Signaling

Leave no question as to the sort of music that your audience will be hearing with one of these mic stands crafted in the seventh circle of Hell.

MM Fabrications

Dr. Seuss-o-Phones

Spot and Piplup are Bluetooth karaoke mics with built-in effects. I'd love to see a metal singer using one of these on stage.

797 Audio

Whovillepalooza

As long as I'm on a Dr. Seuss kick, this is what I would expect the sound system to look like for a festival staged in Whoville. Whether it's the Grinch's Whoville or Horton's Whoville is up to you.

Void Acoustics

V-Harmonica

That's what the Jamboxx would have been called if I'd found it in the Roland booth. Now harp players can join the late 20th century and control synthesizers with a controller they are familiar with.

Jamboxx

Sweet Lamp O' Mine

Or maybe "Welcome to the Man Cave" would be a better title, because that's the only place you'll see one of these.

Rocking the Clock

Desert Island Studio

They were smart to show this sound-proofed, air conditioned studio-in-a-shipping container at NAMM. When I walked in and they closed the doors, it was obvious how good it was at blocking out the cacophony of NAMM.

Noah Tokyo

La-Z-Boy Prime

I spent a few minutes in this full-body massage chair, but in the back of my mind I was afraid of it going full-on Roujin Z and rampaging through NAMM.

Orest

Double Crown Mic Stand

Off the top of my head I could only think of the Queen song and "Daisy Bell," but the repertoire of bicycle-related songs is longer than I expected.

Boss

You Want To Do What Where?

I'm sure these are fine earplugs, but my first thought when reading the name of the company was: nope.

Eargasm Earplugs

Proving a Point

If a mic can still work after spending time submerged in the most corrosive substance known to man, you can expect them to work under normal conditions for years.

Countryman Associates, Inc.

The Autoharp of Guitars

Instead of pressing the strings to the fret, you press the fret to the strings by way of a button on the back of the neck. Tuned D Bb G F A C, you can get two major chords and two minor chords out of each fret depending on which strings you strum.

Dynamic Guitar

Chopin Board

Embrace the dad joke. You know you want to.

The Music Gifts Company

Loose Leaf Vocals

The TB-1 and TB-2 are mics made from tea balls. They've got a 1" proximity which could be useful for talkback for super loud stage volumes. And with ZVEX being ZVEX, the TB-2 has a wah filter.

ZVEX

Rainbow Cable Dreads

Even though this was just a trade show attention-getter, it could be a cool cable management system for a studio that wants a little more vibe.

Tsunami Cables

As God Intended

If you're so retro as to have a turntable, you may as well go the whole nine retro yards and listen to it via the tiny speakers built into this stylish device.

Rock 'N' Rolla

Koll's Kombi

A vintage Type 2 flatbed might be only marginally harder to get than a Koll guitar, especially if you want something custom.

Koll Guitars

Soooo Tempting

When I came across this fully-functional bedroom during my NAMM death march, I very nearly took a nap. I was surprised it didn't already look like a flop house.

Bedroom

Tremendous Tremolo

I only expect to see a tremolo this large outside a Hard Rock Cafe.

Göldo Music GmbH

Safety First

Not only do these lighted stands provide on-stage flair, they're also less likely to be tripped over.

No Gear Left Unlit

If I put together a stage with all the self-lighting gear I've seen over the years, you wouldn't need any additional lighting.

Master of Flippers

All nightmare long you can be killing time while you hit the lights.

Rock N Roll Industries Magazine

Life After Music

Strüng makes jewelry out of old guitar strings. They do have plans to offer limited edition pieces with strings from famous players.

Strüng

Warhol Paint Job

The colors that the POP LSM-9 come in would have appealed to Andy's Pop Art sensibilities.

MXL

Talk To The Hand

This vintage sign is telling you to slow down, yet is encouraging the consumption of sugar and caffeine. If this sign was made before 1929 your brown fizzy drink would have contained trace amounts of cocaine, which would have made slowing down even less probable.

Alfred Publishing

Next Up: O-Audio

I expect the folks at M-Audio won't be letting this slide.

N-Audio

Terrible Specs

I kind of wish that the Rat distortion built into this cable was more low profile so I could sneak some of these cables into a studio as a practical joke.

RHC Holding

Oxymoron or Irony?

There are enough interesting people to fill another complete set of Oddities pages, so I generally don't include them here. However, this guy's jacket tickled my sense of humor enough to include it.

Antisocial Social Club

©2018 Barry Wood