The best of NAMM 2012: guitar, tech and drum highlights
This is how it was
NAMM 2012: The 2012 Winter NAMM show has now closed its doors, but not before spitting out four days’ worth of hot new music making gear.
The industry did a fine job of defying the economic gloom, giving us new twists on existing classics and a fair smattering of releases that could genuinely be described as innovative.
We've collated some of our most popular NAMM stories from the past few days into this handy catch-up gallery, but if you want the full story, go to MusicRadar.com's dedicated NAMM 2012 hub for more info and other highlights from the show.
FIRST: Arturia Minibrute
Not such a soft touch
Arturia Minibrute
We weren’t expecting a real analogue synth from Arturia, but now that the Minibrute is here, everyone seems very taken with the idea.
Fender guitars and amps
Electric guitars and amps: you always know what you’re going to get from Fender at a trade show, but that doesn’t make its haul any less impressive when it arrives.
A new DAWn
Wave Machine Labs Auria
A 48-track iPad audio DAW with VST plug-in support certainly sounds impressive on paper. Now we need to find out how well it works and decide if it’s an appropriate fit for the tablet platform.
A big hit
Clavia Nord Drum
Not just a drum machine, but an electronic percussion module that can be triggered by acoustic and electronic kits.
iPad-compatible
Behringer Xenyx iX mixers
We’ve seen a lot of interest in these: three new small format mixers, each of which contains a slot for the iPad.
Behringer unveils iPad mixers iX3242USB, iX2442USB and iX1642USB
28 of them
New Ibanez guitars
With a mixture of brand new models and redesigned guitars with updated specifications, Ibanez had NAMM 2012 in its pocket.
It lives on
Waldorf Pulse 2
Another new analogue synth that no-one was expecting, the Pulse 2 is an updated version of Waldorf’s ‘90s classic.
Pitched perfectly
Peavey AT-200
Antares’ Auto-Tune for Guitar technology has come to fruition in a couple of new instruments this NAMM, and Peavey’s AT-200 is one of them.
Not one, but two
Casio synths
Pre-show leaks ensured that one of Casio’s synth announcements wasn’t a great surprise, but it still managed to catch us off guard with the launch of a second model.
What's in a name?
PRS artist guitars
What do Dave Navarro, Orianthi, Nick Catanese, Chris Henderson, Neal Schon, and Cody Kilby have in common? They all had artist guitars on the NAMM PRS stand, and very nice they were too.
Getting some air time
Akai MPC Fly
It’s interesting that Akai’s iPad-powered MPC Fly seems to have outshone the new Renaissance and Studio MPCs in the publicity stakes. Could this be the start of something big in tablet beat making?
A lot to take on board
Teenage Engineering Oplab
The OP-1 manufacturer’s latest project is hard to explain a couple of sentences, but we reckon a lot of people are going to have a lot of fun working out what you can do with it.
I/O and DSP
Universal Audio Apollo
A high-spec audio interface with UAD DSP and powered plug-ins? We like the sound of that, and suspect that a lot of other people will as well.
