Friday, June 20th, 2008 kicked off the official start of SUMMER NAMM 2008 in Nashville, TN. We hit the floor as early as possible and began to cover the show, meet with dealers, vendors, and the handful of artists that came out to show their support.

 

 

Damian spotted Drummer Zoro "The Minister of Groove" and he greeted us for a photo.

 

 

Ludwig displayed a beautiful new prototype of this Maple Vintage Kit with a Burl style exotic finish. The interesting thing about this kit is the "vintage" style Bearing Edges on the toms. They are more rounded instead of sharply angled like most drums today. They had an amazing sound and we would have loved to taken this home with us, but as it is a prototype, we may have to wait awhile.

 

 

Keith enjoyed checking out the Ludwig drums and left with high remarks about their setup.

 

 

Mapex displayed some effort with their booth. They had this pretty sweet 8 piece kit using the Mapex Kit builder online. The color is cool, the cymbals are Zildjian Pitch Black cymbals.

 

 

Stagg Cymbals put on a nice display. Other cymbal companies present were Sabian and Meinl

 

We were invited to the Gretsch 125th Anniversary Party over at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. We arrived and were greeted nicely and enjoyed a tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame and then met the Gretsch Family.

 

 

Damian, Tracy, Mrs. Gretsch, Mr. Fred Gretsch, Eric and Keith at the 125th Gretsch Anniversary Party.

 

 

We partied hard on the town all night after the Gretsch Party and began day 2 (in pain..). Please check back later as we have over 250 pictures of this Summer NAMM 2008 event to be uploaded. We'll be uploading the full resolution pictures and video after we get back to the office next week. 

 

 

Here's an update from Drummer Connection's coverage of SUMMER NAMM 2008, Nashville TN. DAY 2

Saturday was a bit more active than Friday's opening day. We figured as much (people having jobs, etc). The show was pretty busy, but not near as difficult to navigate through as the Winter NAMM show. Keep in mind that this appears to be a very focused event, especially on Guitars. The fact that INFOComm 2008 ended on Jun 20th, and that more than likely reduced the number of electronics manufacturers that were setup here at this show. Regardless, we still made some new friends and have some pictures for you.

 

 

One of our favorite artists, Johnny Rabb was on site and religiously displaying the new Roland TDW-20 expansion board which is going to dramatically improve the Roland TD-20 Vdrums (Thanks! we have two of the TD-20's that could use some new features!).

 

 

Bob Rupp from Sabian displays the Sabian logo with Pride. Sabian had the strongest presence of representatives that were willing to discuss business and opportunities (at least for the Drumming Industry) on site. It's good to see awesome representatives that are going to be on site to promote the company they work for and believe in... Way to represent, Sabian!

Other drum companies such as Pearl, DW, Premiere, ddrum, etc did not have booths at Summer NAMM 2008. We really looked forward to seeing Pearl, but as of now, we don't have any further expectations of any displays at this show from those companies. However, Tama, Ludwig, Mapex had their own booths. Gretsch Drums were represented by the following kit:

 

 

Kaman Music Corporation (a Music Distributor) brought this awesome Gretsch Pure Wood kit out. In fact, someone who we believe will be endorsed very soon, Isaiah Fogle jammed out on this kit (and every other kit in NAMM).

 

 

 

Isaiah Fogle - upcoming drummer - 10 years old

 

 

 

 

 

Another pic of Sabian's cymbal setup.

 

 

Taye had this interesting, and very nice, kick pedal setup. This tri-beater system covers about any type of beater type you may need. This pedal is very well constructed and heavily adjustable. Something to look out for later on as it hits mainstream.

 

 

Eric and Damian (Damian always has a look on his face) at Starbucks taking a load off.

 

 

Who would resist another opportunity to go to White Castle? My wife and I stopped by to grab some cheeseburgers.

We'll have made arrangements for Sunday that include only a small trip to NAMM in the morning, so I doubt we'll be doing any more coverage while the show is going on. We have some interesting things planned now that we have covered pretty much everything we as drummers have found interesting at SUMMER NAMM 2008.