We Asked the Experts about the Coolest New Gear at NAMM

NAMM, the National Association for Music Merchants, has been camped out in sunny Anaheim, California since Thursday. In addition to being the World's largest trade show for music products, it's also the only place you'll find DJs nerding out in blissful harmony with crusty old metal dads, musical mad scientists, and tech-o-philes alike.

There was quite a bit of fervor around a few dance-relevant products in particular, and we got up-close-and-personal with the experts who know them best. Check out what we found:

Rane MP2015 Rotary Mixer

As Traktor instructor to many of the world's most notable DJs, Mike "Endo" Henderson knows a thing or two about gear. Homie was like a kid in a candy shop all day at NAMM and, in particular, he was all about Rane's MP2015 rotary mixer: "It's got all a lot of the rotary knobs that you get on all the old-school house mixers," he explained. "The knobs are nice and big and they feel really good when you turn them. The feel of the knobs is key, you get a smoother mix when you can feel it. The look is very nice, got a wooden aesthetic to it. The biggest thing is that it has two USB ports. It's a digital mixer that bring all the touch of the old school. It's got filters for each deck, which is great, and an isolator, which a lot of old school clubs used to have. You also have EQ's for each channel, which is huge."

Check out Rane's official page.

Pioneer XDJ1000

RIS Labs head and storied LA DJ Eric Sharp told us about Pioneer's game-changing XDJ1000's, which are pushing things forward while actually removing aspects: "They've removed the CD functionality, so it's just controlled by USB's, but you can also connect your computer. There's a touchscreen, as well, so no more scrolling. There's also a keyboard universal search feature for tracks, so it's a lot easier to find tunes. There are minimal buttons on the dashboard because they're set up a perform mode on the touchscreen, as well. This model, the XDJ1000 is a replacement for the CDJ850, which is a lower than the club standard CDJ2000. Typically, Pioneer puts new features on their lower end new models. We'll see these features on the higher end players once there's a proof-of-concept."

Check out the XDJ at Pioneer.

The Synthophone

I was drawn away from the Pioneer booth by some smooth synth sax stylings tooting in the distance. It was coming from normcore superstar Eric (above) and his Synthophone. He explains, "A Synthophone is a saxophone with electronics inside so it can send MIDI messages, like a keyboard controller. There's a software that decodes the fingerings and the breath pressure, so when i blow into it, I can control the volume. You can use any synthesizer of computer soft synth with it. It works great in a band setting. I do a lot of cover gigs where I'm the entire horn section. One that comes up a lot is "Hot Hot Hot" - I can do all the harmonies myself!"

Find the Synthophone at Softwind Instruments

The Moog

Grammy winning British jazz bassist and musical mad scientist Malcolm Cecil was holding court in the round at the Moog exhibit. I asked what the coolest new thing at Moog was. He looked at me incredulously and said, "The Moog! No question. This is a re-release of the same instrument Bob Moog made. I bought two C3's back in 1967! He then went on to make a number of other models and when Mini-Moog came out, it sort of eclipsed them all because they're notoriously difficult to program and tune. This model is much easier. The Moog company decided that there was a market for these instruments in their original form. There's the same artwork, same components, put together in exactly the same way. Imagine Rolls Royce releasing a 1929 Phantom…with cruise control. They're not cheap, but they never were! My original Moogs cost me more than my house. "

Check out the modulars at Moog.com

Novation Launchpad Pro

We found Dubspot instructor extraordinaire Thavius Beck offering tutorials on Novation's next big deal: "Our new flagship product is the Launchpad Pro. It's a grid-based MIDI controller," he explains. "You have an 8x8 grid of buttons. Initially, they're made for you to be able to launch clips in the session view of Ableton Live. With the new Launchpad Pro, you're able to control a lot more than Ableton. You can control external hardware directly from the Launchpad without a computer. It makes it way more fun to interact with other synths. Some of the biggest differences are we have true RGB color for the pads, so if you color code your clips in Ableton, the colors are accurately depicted. We have breakout cables for MIDI in and output. We've added velocity sensitivity to to the grid, which is a new feature. We just announced the Launchpad Pro last week and it doesn't ship until June."

The Launchpad Pro is at Novation