Here’s a couple of new products to be announced at NAMM 2017.

The first product is a rotary speaker system that doesn’t use any rotating elements. It’s the Moon Amplification Skamp®.

The Skamp® has nine transducers in total: six speakers and four horns. There are two speakers and one horn per side. The DSP models a the physical movement of sound around a room by shooting the audio out each side in a round-robin fashion.

This design is a real head-slapper. Why didn’t someone think of it before? Kudos. I haven’t seen a retail price as yet.

If you want more info, you can check out the U.S. Patent:

Apparatus and Method for a Celeste in an Electronically-Orbited Speaker
US patent number: 9,286,863
Publication date: March 15, 2016
Inventor: Nancy Diane Moon

BTW, if you live in the USA, patent law does not allow “personal use.” So, forget about building this one in your backyard!

In the Something Red category, check out the Rock’N’Rolla junior briefcase turntable. You can get these guys in black, white, and teal, too. All set to spin your 33s, 45s and 78s.

The Rock’N’Rolla drew out a moment of nostalgia — the first time I ever heard Jimi Hendrix’ Purple Haze. In 1967, I was playing in a Motown, Soul, Top 40s garage band. The guy who was our erstwhile manager came rushing in and, breathing hard, said, “You’ve got to hear this!”

Being dirt poor teens, nobody had a working record player. The only player that could spin a record had a busted amplifier. So, we put the 45 on the player, turned it on, put our ears next to the tone arm, and listened to the needle scratch out “Purple Haze” unamplified.

I didn’t get a chance to cover “Purple Haze” until I moved on to the psychedelic band — which still covered a few Motown tunes lest we got our butts kicked. Cleveland, 1967.