By George Petersen

The Winter NAMM show is one big five-ring (hall) circus. Every year the NAMM people say it’s the biggest show ever, this year touting some 85,000 registrants packed into the convention center. Now, note that they use the word registrants rather than attendees, so the REAL figure is somewhat less than that, but when the lines at the hot dog stands are still packed at four in the afternoon, you can safely figure the joint is packed.

At NAMM, the traditional salutation is not “Hey, howya doin’?” but rather “So what have you seen that’s cool?” In years past, this was an easy one to answer, but this year there was no single overriding product that was on everyone’s must-see list. So we move from Tier One to Tier Two, which leaves us with a lot of slick ancillaries and stocking stuffers for next year’s gift list. And in this melange, there are amazing little things that might slip by on casual glance. Here, are some of my faves in that oft-neglected category:

++ALLEN & HEATH’s WZ3 Monitor mixer is admittedly a little large for a stocking stuffer. With onboard passive mic splitting, 4-band EQ and 12 mix outs assignable as mono or stereo pairs, this 16 mic/line input monitor mixer is an ideal centerpiece for an affordable in-ear monitoring solution for clubs or traveling bands. www.allen-heath.com

++DIGITECH killed me with its new harmony processors. I’m normally underwhelmed by such things, but the Vocalist Live 2 and Vocalist Live 4 vocal effects processors (designed for the singing guitarist) blew me away, both in terms of intelligent, lifelike harmonies, and in their ease of use. Rather than make users define what key they’re in, you simply strum a chord on the guitar connected thru the unit, and the device follows the guitar to match harmonies with the vocal input. Both units include a clean mic preamp with vocal reverb/comp/EQ as well as an onboard chromatic tuner. The $429 list VL2 does two-part (plus your voice) harmonies; the $579 VL4 does four parts and throws in pitch correction as well. These pedalboards include a large bypass button for kicking in/out the processing during the chorus/verse/etc. www.digitech.com

++MXL may have finally got the USB mic thing down. For years now, we’ve been bombarded with the “revolution” in USB mics–something I’m not wowed about, because once you put a digital output (AES/SPDIF/USB/FireWire/etc.) on a mic, you’ve immediately created a product with a limited shelf life. Beyer did this back in 1996, with the “First Digital Mic”–a MCD100 that combined a condenser mic with a 16-bit digital converter in the handle. That was great until people started using 20- and 24-bit stuff and then the mic was obsolete. At NAMM, MXL showed a cigar-sized $99 accessory with an XLR on one end USB on the other: it’s connect and go. The idea of having an outboard USB adapter that works with any mic is cool, so your “USB mic” could be anything from your collection: a shotgun one day, a figure-8 ribbon the next… And best of all, MXL figured a way to supply phantom power from the USB bus—no simple feat. www.mxlmics.com

++NEUTRIK, everybody’s fave connector supplier came out with crimp termination versions of its popular “XX” and “DLX” series XLRs. These don’t even require stripped leads and automatically cut through the insulation to make a secure contact in the crimping process—a great time saver for cable fabricators, but having a couple available in your toolbox may surely save your neck sometime, somewhere, someday in the field. www.neutrikusa.com

++SABINE floored me with another innocuous-looking-yet-amazing accessory: the Phantom Mic Rider. Barely larger than an XLR connector, it packs an FBX Feedback Exterminator, automatic gain adjust, control of proximity effect and plosives and infrared mic gating—in a phantom-powered $119 inline accessory. Onboard DSP does the trick to create the world’s smallest automatic mic mixer that’s perfect for unattended mics in contracting applications or simply as automated mic gate for live sound that can shut off an unused vocal mic when no one’s nearby. www.sabine.com

When not working on Mix stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Check ‘em out at www.jenpet.com.

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