Nashville’s Music City Center
Everything Awesome About the 2019
Summer NAMM Show in Nashville
The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) is a trade-only business show catering to both international and local distributors. Starting over a century ago in 1901, it is held every January at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. The NAMM Show is one of the largest music trade shows in the world, drawing in thousands of people annually. And is anyone really surprised that the show is still going strong today? In a Rolling Stone article on the state of the guitar industry, Senior Music Business Editor Amy Wang details how guitar playing is as popular as ever, as it is one of the cornerstones of modern music. This is one of the factors behind the increasing demand for more innovative and better tools to make music.
Recently, the show has expanded via the Summer NAMM Show. Unlike the main NAMM Show, Summer NAMM is held in July instead of January and takes place in Nashville, Tennessee at the newly constructed Music City Center. Here’s a list of interesting and innovative gear introduced to us at the 2019 Summer NAMM Show!
New Breedlove Ukelele Line
Kim Breedlove started building banjos in the 1960s, which led to the conception of the Breedlove Guitar Company. Today, Breedlove Guitars are the industry standard, especially for ukuleles, which is why the new Breedlove line caused quite a stir at the last Summer NAMM Show.
The new ukulele line combines Kim Breedlove’s signature tenor body shape and his fondness for Myrtlewood. This evergreen is also known as Oregon myrtle, which only makes sense as Breedlove Guitars operates out of the Beaver State. The instruments hit the sweet spot between an immaculate low-end presence and a rich bass timbre, giving you a whole new layer of depth that is altogether unique to all the other tonewoods.
Gorilla Warfare MKII by Greer Amplification
What first started out as a DIY experiment, ended up being what we know today as Greer Amplification. Nick Greer began making custom gear in 1998, and has been making handmade pedals ever since. His company’s latest pedal is an updated version of their riff from the iconic ProCo Rat distortion pedal. The shiny new Gorilla Warfare MKII boasts the same LM308 chip that put the ProCo Rat distortion pedal on the map. What this means is that it has the same punch as the iconic pedal, but with all the kinks beautifully worked out. All in all, the Gorilla Warfare MKII provides a more dynamic range, which will be a treat for owners of the original pedal, including former Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl.
Supro Ozark Electric Guitar
The Supro Ozark is a reimagining of the late ’50s Supro guitar played by the likes of Ry Cooder, David Lindley, Jason Isbell, and Blake Mills. Supro collaborated with Lace Music to develop custom-made Aluma 90 pickups so that they could capture the unique sound present in the WWII-era original Supro. The new Supro boasts the original look of the 1950s model, but with all the power and refinement harnessed afforded by modern-day engineering.
So there you have it — the highlights from the last Summer NAMM Show. If you’d like to write about music events like the Summer NAMM inside or outside of the United States, check out our guidelines and send your query/piece to or to Ragazine’s music editor, Fred Roberts.
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