Yea, I could use more NAMMs like this one.
Been super productive with what I’ve got and less distracted by vast options of new and shiny.
The only thing that really interested me is way out of my usual price range, and that makes me reminisce about my early years when good hardware was something I could only enjoy vicariously, reading posts on analog heaven and 313 hyperreal list serves.
I usually wait until the annual NAMM Oddities is published, before making any judgement about NAMM. That’s how I found out about the QES Retrofier Roadtripper MCM, which is now my favorite guitar amp ever.
but only until it became known in a surprise announcement that they have 2 Gb of empty storage space onboard and according to the Korg rep may be releasing user loaded samples, reversing their earlier announcements. So it’s back (tentatively) on my list. That was one of the high points of NAMM to me.
Funny how hard UAD stuck to the party line that LUNA is NOT a DAW!
Let’s just be happy they didn’t try to coin the phrase Analogue Audio Workstation!
wow! thanks for that, missed that announcement. So maybe I’ll flip my old SR for the wavestate once the user sample feature becomes available… I mean, wavesequencing looks infinitely more enjoyable on the wavestate UI, and the new features would be welcome as well.
At least I’m putting that WaveRex custom PCM card purchase on hold for now 
Patience mon ami. He always takes at least a month to update after the latest NAMM
Something from NAMM that i missed was the two new eurorack modules from Noise Engineering – Virt Iter, and Desmodus Versio. The Virt Iter is a reprogrammable DSP stereo oscillator. The Desmodus Versio is a reprogrammable DSP stereo reverb.
I was alerted to these two only recently by Tori Letzler and Matt Hodson in the Sonic Talk #604 that i linked above.
You can listen in this Perfect Circuit video:
The QES Retrofier Roadtripper MCM does sound nice – i’ve been looking for another guitar amp and this ticks a lot of the boxes.
I found this video made at the Tacoma Guitar Festival 2017:
The reason i said NAMM 2019 is i found this announcement by QES for the Retrofier Roadtripper MCM for the 2019 NAMM show.
Color choices:
My Boss Katana 100 is still the go to for band use because it’s loud enough to hang w/ the band but I couldn’t resist when I saw a Roadtripper MCM on sale used at Guitar Center. It’s red, unlike my first color choice, which would have been Seafoam Green, but at under $500 i thought it a good enough deal. It’s the same red as in this video - and she ain’t joking about how light it is:
It’s a single-channel amp with a clean tone that pleases me, and also sounds good with overdrive and fuzz in front. The “wide band” spring reverb is the only one I’ve heard that sounds good with electric violin - most others have pronounced ringing that can clash with what I’m trying to play on violin. It brings out the tonal character of my semi-hollow guitars like the Eric Johnson Thinline in a way that the Katana doesn’t - it let me hear the airiness of that semi-hollow body, whereas it just sounds like any other Strat through the Katana. Oh and the amptremolo sounds great too.
If you don’t mind my guitar playing, this vid was recorded on the MCM, with the aforementioned Strat:
For this demo of the RM-1n dirty reverb, I tried recording the XLR output of the MCM into a Roland Go:Mixer Pro. Reverb on the MCM was turned all the way down. Interestingly, connecting the XLR out of the amp does not disable the speaker, nor does the amp volume knob have any effect on the XLR signal. There is a speaker simulator circuit on the XLR output although the video doesn’t really showcase that.
NAMM Oddties 2020 edition is out - as always high chance there is something in there that you didn’t see covered by the usual suspects (SonicState, MusicRadar, etc.).
His comment about Urban Strings violins caught my attention.
WingMan looks useful for foot control of some pedals where you just want to tweak something and don’t want to use an expression pedal for that parameter.
