Hey guys - doing my roving reporter thing.
I dropped in to the Poland Guitar Festival in Lodz Poland today to check out the gear and was pleasantly surprised.
First up - Malwood
The luthier (Mr Malinowski) said it was made more or less for the show. He let me lay my grubby hands on it and damn it’s good to hold a high quality instrument. Really nice balance, comfortable neck and some great looks. I’m not sure about the technical specs but they might be on the website.
Next up - Rickenbacker!
Bass face eh? I finally laid hands on the legendary short scale Rick 4030 - in walnut. This thing is unbelievably light and sounds, well, not very Ricky. Unfortunately I couldn’t fight my way to the front of the queue to play it personally.
Next it was off to Jolana, a Czech firm that used to make copies, I mean homages, of more expensive western basses and guitars. They more recently gained some attention with their Billy Gibbons guitar, made for the man himself.
This then caught my eye -
Weird eh? Maybe it stops your stomach getting sweaty during long gigs? Anyway it’s by GiR or GLR (or G1R ?) and their basses look pretty sweet.
On the way to the beer tent, this one caught my eye by Mensinger
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Again really light, really comfortable to play and with a gorgeous wood pattern. I’m half tempted to go down the headless route if I get another axe, although the Ibanez EHB also looks really nice.
Finally, I stopped by Mihado -
Weird eh? I couldn’t get to try them out but they are really small and would probably be good for travel basses (paging @sunDOG ).
Generally though the festival was ok - probably not on the same scale as the American ones but still there were some good instruments on show. Although most were the usual Ibanez / Epiphone models, there were some quirky and quite unique ones.
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. Shame I didn’t get the chance to play them but the people on the stalls were really not very forward. I stood, I coughed, I fumbled with myself but not a peep out of them….