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And the WINNER is . . . hold on, hold on, hold up the show! This is the very first Harmony Central Golden Axe Awards. I can't just jump into the winners without telling you what this contest is all about. As you may know, the 1999 Winter NAMM show just ended. As you may also know, the Harmony Central writers were there in force gathering all the important news that was fit to print. While at the NAMM show, I (Cliff Suttle) was assigned to scout out the ten best guitars at the show and then rank them. This has become the 1999 Golden Axe Award contest.
The guitar division of the 1999 Golden Axe Awards went off with flying colors and the finalists were truly spectacular. The bass division however, has been frustrating and disappointing. I don't know if bass manufacturers lack creativity, or if bass players are just not willing to buy fancy basses, but I found the basses at this NAMM show to be a yawn in general. Sure there were lots of really great basses at the show. They played well and sound great, but were dull after that. If you took out the satin wood and black painted finishes you were left with no more than a hand full of basses. Now I can't stress enough that there were lots of good basses at the show, but if you look at the Golden Axe Guitar Division Awards you will see the kind of instruments that we were looking for.
Perhaps the situation here is caused by the personality of many bass players. Often, bass players are very laid back and mellow kind of people. This may be a stereo type, but it's often true. Now before you write to complain, I would like to state that I'm a bass player too. Perhaps, just maybe, bass players don't want fancy basses. Or, perhaps they have just never been given a choice.
When we got the pictures back from the show, we only had six nominations for the award. Not even enough to fill all ten finalist positions. Therefore, all nominated basses made the finals. The basses in the finals are very nice, but I wish we could have had more of them. Perhaps next year. I hope that the lack of nominations will not reflect poorly on the finalists. The basses represented here were very nice indeed. Our hats are off to these fine manufacturers and the work they have done.
Here were some of the rules under which this contest was judged.
The bass had to be present at the NAMM show. No pictures or late entries were allowed. This cut out some excellent bass manufacturers because they didn't bring their best work to the show. To those companies, better luck next year.
The bass had to meet or exceed what would be considered pro level quality for playability and sound. Needless to say, all these basses sounded and played wonderful. The perfect bass sound is a very personal thing. Therefore, any bass that met the above criteria was considered without any more analysis of their sound or playability weighting into the competition.
The bass had to encompass something that set it apart from other instruments in it's class. This could include workmanship, inlay work, painting, unusual materials, or an unusual design.
Also, each company could submit multiple instruments, but only one instrument from each company could make the final ten (or six in this case).
So . . . without any further delay, let the winners parade begin: