Friday, June 20th, 2008 kicked off the official start of SUMMER NAMM
2008 in Nashville, TN. We hit the floor as early as possible and began
to cover the show, meet with dealers, vendors, and the handful of
artists that came out to show their support.

Damian spotted Drummer Zoro "The Minister of Groove" and he greeted us for a photo.

Ludwig displayed a beautiful new prototype of this Maple Vintage Kit with a Burl style exotic finish. The interesting thing about this kit is the "vintage" style Bearing Edges on the toms. They are more rounded instead of sharply angled like most drums today. They had an amazing sound and we would have loved to taken this home with us, but as it is a prototype, we may have to wait awhile.

Keith enjoyed checking out the Ludwig drums and left with high remarks about their setup.

Mapex displayed some effort with their booth. They had this pretty sweet 8 piece kit using the Mapex Kit builder online. The color is cool, the cymbals are Zildjian Pitch Black cymbals.

Stagg Cymbals put on a nice display. Other cymbal companies present were Sabian and Meinl

Gretsch 125th Anniversary Party

We were invited to the Gretsch 125th Anniversary Party over at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. We arrived and were greeted nicely and enjoyed a tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame and then met the Gretsch Family.

Damian, Tracy, Mrs. Gretsch, Mr. Fred Gretsch, Eric and Keith at the 125th Gretsch Anniversary Party.

We partied hard on the town all night after the Gretsch Party and began day 2 (in pain..). Please check back later as we have over 250 pictures of this Summer NAMM 2008 event to be uploaded. We'll be uploading the full resolution pictures and video after we get back to the office next week