NAMM 2013: Amped Best Of Show Awards

The best guitar products from NAMM 2013   05-Feb-13

Well here we go, the award ceremony to end all award ceremonies... it's time for us to give out a few gongs, here's our awards for the best guitar products on show at NAMM 2013.

It felt like an odd year for guitar products, one of the most exciting products got sent home by US customs (for currently unknown reasons), and with all the leaps forward in technological advancements in the digital sphere recently, it didn't feel like there would be a lot of those "why didn't I think of that?" style ideas.

But as per usual, we stepped into the Anaheim Convention Center, and we were amazed at some of the products we saw. But which products were the best? Well, here we go...

Best In Show

This is the award for the overall best product in the show, the one that really got our hearts beating. There were so many products we considered for this accolade. The new additions to the Yamaha THR range, the Gibson Min-E-Tune (it's finally here), but we're a company that's all about pedals, and most importantly, we love weird stuff.

We wanted to give it to a product which was clever, and that sounded great. So we finally arrived at the conclusion that there was one standout product.

Winner: Wampler Dual Fusion

Yep, that's right, well done Wampler. It's another one of their clever little 'amps in box', dual channel, switchable signal path, dual inputs. All of these cool features, and it sounds immense. Once again, well done Wampler.

Best Amplifier In Show

There are three main contenders for this category, one is small and affordable, one is fairly large and affordable, and the other is bloody huge, and not so affordable.

We won't tell you what each of these is... (yet), because it will undoubtedly cause endless debate, and before the debate, we need to tell you what the winner is.

Winner: Orange OR100 Twin Channel

We went for the one which was huge and not really very affordable, but it sounds like nothing we've heard for at least around ten years.

The OR100 quite simply sounds incredible, if you are a high gain rock player, then you will have a use for this amp, it even has enough gain for metal. Not only this, but it has a crisp and clear clean tone.

Features include variable wattage, so you can get higher gain at lower volumes, two channels, and 3 band EQ on the gain channel, and a 2 band EQ on the clean channel.

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