The Top 5 Things We Saw At Summer NAMM

The summer NAMM convention took place a few weeks ago, but if you couldn't make it to Nashville, Gear Factor host Squiggy has a handy list of the five best things that he saw while he was there.

1. The Yamaha Revstar guitar - "I absolutely love these Revstar guitars. Not only do they have stunning finishes, but these guitars hold up in heavy music."

2. The Martin D-200 Deluxe guitar - "You ever wonder what a $150,000 guitar looks like? The wood, the inlays, the craftsman ship, literally everything about this guitar is over the top."

3. D'Angelico Solid Body Guitars - "D’Angelico has always been a highly respected guitar brand," Squiggy says, but they made hollow-body guitars, which aren't ideal for metal."It’s like when Gretsch starting making solid body guitars, people gravitated to them because of their legacy. These guitars will definitely hold up in the heavy music space."

4 Blackstar Unity Bass Amp -  "Blackstar is well known in the guitar amp market but they never made bass amps. They were started by a few ex-Marshall Amp guys. They are a forward thinking tube amp company. Blackstar have always embraced heavy music and have been publicly unapologetic about it."

5. Gator Armature Products - "Gator Cases make the best instrument cases in the industry and they recently bought Levy's Leathers, who are the number one guitar strap company, by a long shot." The furniture for musicians that they're coming up with has Squiggy excited.

A few honorable mentions, via "The Squiggys," the awards that our host gives out at every NAMM:

The "What The Fuck" award: 10s Guitars for their 14 string djent guitar. "What do you need 14 strings for? I don't know, but it's fuckin' awesome."

The "I Don't Care, I Like It" award: the Guild Cordoba, inspired by the Pixar movie Coco.

The "Inspiration" award: Fender Guitars for Fender Play. "Anybody that's going to spend time and resources to inspire people to play music, wins in my book!"

The "Forward Thinking" award, also goes to Fender, for working with the band Turnstile. "I love the fact that such an iconic brand like Fender has embraced such an important underground band like Turnstile. Turnstile is an influencer with young people. Although they may not be the most famous band right now, they influence the underground culture and will influence the new breed of buyer. Traditionally, brands have been reluctant to give the underground bands high-level visibility. Fender had [bassist] Franz Lyons front and center! Fender usually only gives Clapton and Hendrix front and center rights, is now giving that space to underground emerging artists that are almost anti-rockstar. It was great to see."

Follow Squiggy at The Music Experience's Facebook page.

50 Most Important Metal Bands in the 21st Century