Editor’s Note | February 2019

If one needed any further indication of how fast the stompbox industry has grown, one need look no further than this year’s NAMM Show in Anaheim, California in late January. NAMM, for the uninitiated, stands for “National Association of Music Merchants,” or, in laymen’s terms, virtually everyone who manufactures, distributes, markets, sells or deals in guitars, amplifiers, music software, sheet music, orchestral instruments, pianos, keyboards, synthesizers, drums and electronic drums, and, of course, dear reader, our favorite little magic creatures, guitar effects pedals.

This year’s Winter NAMM Show, at the Anaheim Convention Center, attended by yours truly, saw bigger display booths than ever for once best-kept-secret companies like Keeley Electronics, Walrus Audio, Red Panda, and ChaseBliss, massive walk-in dreamscapes for venerable companies like Dunlop, Voodoo Labs, DigiTech and Ibanez—who were celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Tube Screamer—and an absolute gaggle of brilliant breakthrough pedal makers like Native Audio, Deep Space Devices, Alexander Pedals, Cusack Music/Mojo Hand FX, RabbitHoleFX, Meris, Industrialectric, Neunaber, Massive FX, GFI System, Joe Gore Pedals, SolidGoldFX, Glou Glou, Jam, Mastro Valvola, Big Ear NYC, and many more. If you thought the well of creativity and innovation in stompboxes was running dry, well, you would be quite wrong. It was bloody inspiring, I can tell you.

This year’s Groundhog Day also gave us rare sightings of some legendary players—just in the last few weeks alone, our able team of Stompbox Book writers have interviewed the likes of Steve Vai, Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets, Kaki King, Courtney Barnett, David Torn, and many more. Keep your eyes here on the Stompbox blog for super-cool inside reports on all these players and all their pedals, as well as on the breakthrough stompbox creators who helped make this year’s NAMM show the biggest and baddest yet for stompbox aficionados and builders. It’s an evolution we are terribly proud to help document and support.

Don’t miss Dan Epstein’s amazing Forever Flanged piece in this month’s awesome blog offerings, Eilon Paz’s unique audience with our dear friend Dean DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots, “Behind the Counter” interviews with the coolest music store dudes from Troy, NY to Manhattan, and much more. This is our tribe; we’re happy to be a part of it with you.

With delay and reverb,

“ROTO”