The Best Stuff I Saw At The Makers & Merchants Guitar Showcase

Reclaimed wood, loud fuzz pedals, and lots of loud and annoying blues playing.

Last Sunday, I got the chance to go visit the Makers & Merchants Guitar Show, held annually in Worcester, Mass by the wonderful people at Old Truck Guitars and the Melody Maker in Clinton, Mass. My good friend John and me headed up North from RI, where he was showing off his brilliant Jade Works Instruments, including the killer guitar he made for me (furthest left on pic above). His guitars and basses are killer, and we’ll be doing a separate feature on him later, so on to others for now.

One of the biggest highlights for me from the show was seeing Lord Guitars stuff in the flesh. These are old, beat up guitars that are giving new life via new mods, upgrades, and some TLC.

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This blue Truetone double cut was stunning in real life and just screams old school, garage rock. Lord Guitars probably had the most visited guitar booth all day, as their armada of upgraded pawn shop guitars were just killer.

For more traditional guitars, Karge Guitars made a huge impression on me with an amazing Esquire build that was lightweight, and felt like it was 60 years old.

There was also no shortage of rad pedals, with surprise appearances from CopperSound pedals and Electronic Audio Experiments as well, though I’ve written a ton about them on UG, so let’s focus on some smaller brands.

Stromer Mutroniks was probably the best of the bunch, with a Super Fuzz pedal that sounded like Dan Auerbach was trapped inside and not free to leave. I mean that as a compliment. It was so gnarly, loud, and felt like ripping off velcro through a Marshall stack turned to 11. Rough, spitty, and not smooth at all, but incredibly fun. I also got to check out a distortion and envelope filter from them that were quite intriguing.

There was more spitty, fuzzy goodness from Nerd Knuckle Effects, whose Martyr transistor boost was a lot of fun on bass, and the Omen pedal was also worth a strong look.

Last but not least, Gemini Pickups brought a whole hoard of interesting pickups, and even cooler guitars to show them off in. I’ll most likely be grabbing a pickup or two from Rob for a guitar build and article project this winter. His stuff is seriously great, you may remember me ranting and raving about it from this RWM Guitar review.

The show was a great way to spend a rainy day and I can’t recommend getting out to smaller local shows enough. Even if you’re not in New England and around the builders here, there’s no shortage of awesome gear throughout the country or world.