NAMM 2014: Two Great Discoveries at the Shure and Graph Tech Booths

What an epic whirlwind. This was my first experience at NAMM and I was not disappointed. With thousands of industry people, hundreds of booths (including showrooms way larger than my house), and everyone’s favorite musicians, the event overflowed with passion for music. I wish I could splurge it all on this post for you, but I would need to write a short novel to make that happen. Instead I decided to focus on two things that stood out to me and were not included in all the major press and buzz: the company Graph Tech and Shure’s SE846 headphones.

Graph Tech

This company is truly unique. They create parts (nuts, saddles, bridges, etc.) for guitars, mandolins, and ukuleles with proprietary engineered materials made to improve performance issues found with other materials. One of their materials really caught my eye: a man-made ivory branded “TUSQ.” From a technical stance, the man-made ivory is a great upgrade from traditional bone or ivory because Graph Tech can control both the composition and the material’s grain size and uniformity. In contrast, natural bone or ivory’s composition is predetermined by the animal source and can vary in material grain size (i.e. the microscopic particle size) in addition to containing microscopic structure imperfections. More material uniformity leads to better sound harmonics from your instrument. They have also created different composites of their ivory material with PTFE in order to create slippage to specifically prevent string binding at the nut.

At the booth at winter NAMM, Graph Tech’s reps were super knowledgeable and gave a few sound demonstrations with TUSQ composed guitar picks versus plastic guitar picks. The differences were astounding. Graph Tech also had their “Chops PrePlay” for sampling at the booth. This is a solution you put on your hands before playing your instrument to neutralize the natural acidity on your fingers that would otherwise react with the metal in your strings. Thus, using this solution lengthens the life of your strings. It made my fingers very soft and pleasant smelling if nothing else. Plus, this product goes to show that this company sincerely values and understands the science behind guitars.

Shure SE846 Sound Isolating Earphones

These headphones are first-rate. While much of the NAMM crowd at the Shure booth was congregated around various microphones, one of the exhibitors directed me towards the SE series headphones. After a quick run through of the series I became fascinated with the SE846. These are the top-of-the-line of the SE series and include 4 high-definition drivers (speakers) allowing 15Hz to 20,000Hz frequencies to reach your ear drum. The subwoofer is particularly impressively designed with compact 4 inch long airspace grooves. Or as Shure puts it, “ten precision-welded, stainless steel plates form 4 inches of high acoustic mass pathway, naturally enabling low frequency rolloff to begin at about 75 Hz without distortion or artifact.”

After trying them, I was hooked. Shure had a portion of the booth set up for just for trying out various headphones and microphones. Another Shure representative put on the head phones on me (with disposable plugs) and suddenly the hodgepodge of drums, music, and people that was NAMM was gone. The rep didn’t even try to talk to me as he knew it was fruitless and instead handed me an ipod to plug the headphones into. I started listening to a little Muse, moved through Cuarteto de Nos and Mastadon, then tested the subwoofer with a little Ludacris. The sound was fantastic—really clear separation between different frequencies and thorough bass. The only thing I did not like was the around-the-ear style, but the rep gave an explanation as to why this was important for the sound. This dislike is just a personal preference, probably the result of my extraordinarily small head.

Of course, high quality comes with a price ($1k-$1.3k), but it is well worth it. Plus, at that price Shure treats the buyer very well with a plethora of accessories including a polishing cloth. You know, because anything of such high quality needs to be polished… including headphones apparently. Definitely check out Shure’s quick video tour of the SE846 headphones on their website.