I'm out of pocket

[R.G.]

I'm working the Visual Sound booth at summer NAMM, so I won't be able to put in my normal 12 hours a day here. 

I'll hit the ones I can in the limited time I get.

[gez]

Have fun!

[Bernardduur]

Enjoy yourself!!!

[petemoore]

  Big Smiles...I'll try to be nice while you're away...
  I hope you have all the fun, wish I could visit.

[ulysses]

send pics!

cheers

[Dragonfly]

I'll try to stop by and say hello !

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

Here's a Pic that David Liu took today at summer namm:

http://www.tonepad.com/photoessay.asp?photoEssayID=34&sequenceNo=1

Fp

[Dragonfly]

I looked for you today, but they said you had just left the booth. It was probably about 4 or 4:30, IIRC.

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

Dragonfly,

I'll spend all of tomorrow at the convention center, I'll be stopping by the visual sound booth often, We should bump into each other.

Fp

[R.G.]

I looked for you today, but they said you had just left the booth. It was probably about 4 or 4:30, IIRC.

That would be about the time I had to go sit down for a minute and get something to drink.

Working a trade show booth is tiring, to me at least. If you do it right you're on your feet constantly for eight hours straight, being bright, enthusiastic and courteous as well as thoughtful while your feet hurt more and get flatter. It's a form of athletic endurance contest - last man standing gets the customers.

But it's fun too. One of my great frustrations in my prior life was not ever getting to interact with people who used stuff I designed. At NAMM I get to meet the dealers who sell our stuff as well as a fair section of people who use our products, all in one concentrated whirlwind. That's a blast.

I should mention that David Liu and Francisco Pena made it by the booth. Great guys. They have a much better grounding in music electronics than I did at their age. I think we're in for a new generation of killer effects designers.

I also got to play with some new toys. It's not effects related, but I played some of Reverend's new line of guitars. The silly things come out of the box set up and ready to play, and have that leaps-into-your-hand feel that a guitar has when it's RIGHT. And they're not kilobucks out of pocket, which surprised me. I've been trying to spend more time with my guitar when I get the chance. It helps me remember what it is I do this for.

Enough blathering. I gotta go get ready and be in the booth, bright eyed and enthusiastic when the show opens.

[PerroGrande]

Hi R.G. --

I've worked trade shows in the past, and I know exactly what you're talking about when it comes to fatigue!  On the other hand, it is fun meeting people and seeing new gear, etc.

I agree with you on Reverend guitars by the way.  The local music store that I haunt is a Reverend dealer.  Those things have no business sounding as good and playing as well for the price as they do!  I also like the Les Trem option that is available -- it produces a sweet, classic Bigsby-style tremolo with a much simpler, less obtrusive mechanism.  Reverend also includes the standard stop tail piece if one wants to convert back.  The biggest problem seems to be getting enough of them to satisfy demand (apparently the word is getting out) -- not such a bad problem to have, I guess.

I also hear ya about putting in more playing time.  Until recently, I had largely been out of the world of electronics since I was in the business in the 1980's (it makes me feel less old to add "into the 90's" on that, but I had really moved over to the computer industry by 1991)...  Getting back into it has been incredibly fun (and embarrassing at times -- I am *rusty* on a few things), but your post made me realize that haven't been spending enough quality time with my guitars!  They *are* there for something *other* than plugging in to a breadboard full of stuff!

[tiges_ tendres]

Reverend are seriously the best guitars out there.  From price, features, looks, playabillity, sounds, they have the market cornered!  I'm lucky enough to have a USA Reverend, I just wish I was lucky enough to have one of the imports too!

As for Visual Sound, what are all those new pedals?!  Enquiring minds must know!  All i've seen is a few blurry pictures.

[beatstrat]

Nice to meet you yesterday (Sat), R.G. - it seemed to be a good/OK show even if the attendance (on both sides of the booth) was down some.  The new VS stuff looks good - good marketing what with the shapes/colors echoing the recent past, etc; nice too on the single effects - good stuff.  Can't wait to hear the snob's view/whine on the FET switching.

Off Topic - I love mexican food (Tex-Mex, not so much) and my wife and I found a fantastic place on the east side of Austin (pretty much straight east from downtown/convention center) that was really, really good.  From noon Thurs 'til breakfast today (Sunday) I ate there 5 times - at breakfast they seemed to be serving at least as many beers as they did at lunch and dinner (!!) - funny that, but the food was great.

[Dragonfly]

I wish I could have said hello....I'll just have to do it here on the forum for now.

I definitely understand about trade shows. Thats why I didnt go off following you. I figured that on your break you might actually want to take.....*gasp*....a break !

Anyway, all the best to you RG. I hope the show went well. I like the look of some of those new Visual Sound pedals, and the amps are awesome.

[aron]

I remember one of my first NAMM shows. I was personally picked to man the booth and represent.

Uhh, that meant going EARLY, staying late and cleaning up while the real representatives had FUN!

ENJOY YOURSELF! :-)

[9 volts]

Maybe not the appropriate place to write it but my first pedal was a fuzz face, where did I go to find out what was going on....geo. I just finished my first valve amp, where did I go for info....geo. Auto wahs/wahs etc along the way.....geo. I suppose I'm, just trying to say that over the years I keep going back and reading and rereading the articles on your site RG and am just thanking you for providing such a great resource and for helping out here as well. Rock on and thanks RG

[R.G.]

OK, NAMM over.

You're dead on Aron. Come early, talk all day, stay late and clean up. Yesterday, it was pouring rain when we packed up and ferried the boxes out to the van. Only those who have actually done it can appreciate what the "glamorous life" really entails. Touring musicians get tired of tour busses pretty quickly.

What makes it good is the look in a customer's eye when they say "You're kidding, aren't you? It really does that?" That's cool.

As for Visual Sound, what are all those new pedals?!  Enquiring minds must know!  All i've seen is a few blurry pictures.

Mostly the old pedals with new housings and couple of new tricks. One reason I went to work for Visual Sound is that the owner is dead serious about that motto "Real tone for real people". The enclosures are new - they're die cast aluminum and have a raised section behind the knobs that is a fraction of an inch taller than the knobs. If you miss the foot switch, you don't break the pot shafts off - that HAS happened  . We had a bunch of people who were worried that we had changed the circuits, and I had to reassure them that the circuit function was the same. Those comments are the ones you really like.

We changed from stomp switches to mechanical actuators pressing a 10M operations momentary switch inside. We keep a history of repairs, and the majority of field failures are the mechanical switches. So we went for reliability. You can hit the footswitch actuators with a hammer, but it won't break the switch.

Previously, all Visual Sound pedals were duals, two effects in one box, and there were only three of them. Between the Jekyll & Hyde (OD and distortion), RT66 (OD and compressor) and H2O (chorus and echo) you could go play a gig or a recording session with a small pedal board.

But there was a continuous low level moan for singles, so we separated out the individual functions into single pedals. There is now a new dual, a stacked overdrive pedal we call "Double Trouble", and a pedal with a blendable fuzz/octave, any mix. It looks like a massive new blast of pedals - well, OK, in terms of just the number of new boxes, it is - but mostly, it's the same circuits with flexibility and reliability mods. That's what we call "quality the hard way".

Nice to meet you yesterday (Sat), R.G. - it seemed to be a good/OK show even if the attendance (on both sides of the booth) was down some.  The new VS stuff looks good - good marketing what with the shapes/colors echoing the recent past, etc; nice too on the single effects - good stuff.  Can't wait to hear the snob's view/whine on the FET switching.

Thanks! I ran into a lot of neat people. Just as an example, yesterday we had a couple of Austin police officers walk up to the booth. A fair number of the show attendees were suddenly interested in being somewhere else  . I asked if there was anything I could show them. It turned out that one of them had just finished his first album and his partner sits in on a C&W band twice a week. Deke was quite taken with the 30W Workhorse, which was designed to be a portable amp for just such music. Great guys, and a reminder that Austin is a music town. I met several people who I knew only though emails and posts, including you, David and Francisco.

The funny thing about the whines on FET switching is that the Visual Sound pedals have been FET switched for years now. Whether a purist likes it or not, there are a very large number of our pedals out there on pedalboards with happy owners. Some of those are pedalboards with picky professional owners; session players, touring acts and guys with regular gigs. Those guys are dead serious about how a pedal sounds. They like our FET switching just fine. We've even had a few people refuse to believe that the pedals are not true bypass. I love it when that happens.

I definitely understand about trade shows. Thats why I didnt go off following you. I figured that on your break you might actually want to take.....*gasp*....a break !

You should have followed me. Then I would have had an excuse to pretend you were a customer and I could have had a longer break...    - as well as saying hi.

Maybe not the appropriate place to write it but my first pedal was a fuzz face, where did I go to find out what was going on....geo. I just finished my first valve amp, where did I go for info....geo. Auto wahs/wahs etc along the way.....geo. I suppose I'm, just trying to say that over the years I keep going back and reading and rereading the articles on your site RG and am just thanking you for providing such a great resource and for helping out here as well. Rock on and thanks RG

You're welcome, and thanks for the kind words. I get really stoked at the sheer number of people who are now involved with musical electronics compared to the Great Desert of the 80's. I never left, but it was lonely out there for about twelve years! 

Overall it was a good time, and a great opportunity for me to hear from real players what they need. I kept my notebook handy and scribbled down requests so I can see if they can be worked into new products or features.

I'm sure my feet will quit hurting in a few days... 

[magikker]

If NAMM was open to the public you would have been swamped by DIY fans.