NAMM 2015: Best Guitar Gear From The Show - Pedals, Amps and More

Guitars Editor Richard Beech wraps up our guitar coverage with his top picks   05-Feb-15

SonicState Guitars Editor Richard Beech runs through our favourite guitar products at NAMM 2015...

Hello SonicStaters, first of all I'd like to say a massive thank you for watching our videos (both guitar and tech) in what was our biggest ever year at NAMM (in terms of video views).

On the guitar side of things we made a very conscious decision this time around to try and cover the guitar gear we knew was getting the most buzz on forums, social media and YouTube comment threads.

This was my fifth NAMM show, and I went along to it feeling a little bit jaded (can you believe!) at the prospect of five days of noise, mayhem and shouting.

But you know what? The pedal industry stepped up to the plate in a big way this year, and we saw some really inventive products, we also saw some great amps and some great guitars - and we saw some interesting accessories.

We went off piste a little bit and we were rewarded by meeting some great characters and hearing some great bits of gear.

So with that in mind, here are guitar products which impressed us most this year...

Best Pedal: Catalinbread Antichthon

Where to start with this thing? I'm not going to pretend to understand what's going on underneath the hood until I've had a proper play around with one.

But it's a fuzz circuit which can also give you tremolo oscillations of varying speeds depending on the level of the input signal.

This means your volume knob turns into an expression pedal, and can make the pedal go from sounding like a standard fuzz pedal to sounding like a lawn mower fitted with a jet engine.

Just watch the video for yourself; that's my best piece of advice. As soon as these things are available for purchase in the UK I will be adding one to my rig.

I imagine this might be a divisive choice, it's certainly not for everyone, but it's unique and we absolutely loved it.

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