The event was Summer NAMM, the place, Austin, TX, and the Mackie Satellite Lounge was hotter than both of them rubbing together. Not in temperature but in taste, as our sealed-off demo room for one of Mackie’s newest and most revolutionary products had better air conditioning and interior decorating than the rest of the booths combined. Well… in our opinion. But we’re not that biased. It really was cool.
The Satellite Lounge had a steady stream of traffic, media folks, dealers and end-users alike, and nobody left without either saying “Wow,” “That’s a cool little piece,” or “Dude, you have a couch…” Also, complimenting our typical tradeshow spiel of “Here’s what this piece does,” we were fortunate enough on two out of three days to not only showcase Satellite, but to do it with a well-known artist in the booth to help illustrate exactly how cool this piece can be.
Monte Montgomery is nothing short of the best. As in, he blows other guitarists out of their element… and they know it. Steve Vai is in his fan club, if that helps explain it any better. Can I go on? The art of acoustic guitar is a blend of taste, talent and technique that Monte clearly gets, and expresses in every way, in every lick, on every album, at every live show.
That said, I had a chance to spend more time with Monte than his band mates during my trip to Austin for Summer NAMM. Fortunately for many of us, at noon on both Friday and Saturday he helped me demo Satellite by playing a few of his tunes for as many people as we could smash into the booth, and I must say it went over much better than simply “well”.
We set the scene for showing how cool this piece could be, like so: Monte takes his Satellite Pod and laptop over to his bassist's place with an idea. They track bass and guitar into the laptop via the Pod (because Trackion 2 is also bundled with Satellite and because the Pod works remotely while it’s not attached to the Base Station). Monte then takes the Pod home and returns it to the Satellite Base Station, transfers the session then overdubs the vocals he came up with on the way home. Now, he can build the session out from there or just leave it as is.
Production calls are the end-user's dilemma, but field recording and desktop recording –without unplugging a single cable in your 2-channel desktop interface- has already been taken care of for you by us… in a single piece of gear at a great price.
Anyway, I - nay, we want to thank Monte again for making the Mackie booth what it was for us, and thanks also to all of the people who came down to check out Satellite, Onyx 1200F, Quad EQ and Quad Gate/Compressor, SWA2801z, and everything else we were showcasing at the booth.
Thanks, all, and see you at the next tradeshow, conference or dealer event!
Matt Redmon
Product Specialist
When you spread the gear gospel for a living one of the few bragging rights is “we knew him/her when.” Attending the first Latin Grammy’s, one left with the impression that if there were any justice in the music biz, the very hot—musically and otherwise—singer from Columbia with an Arabic name would cross over. “Es la verdad” as they say, “it’s the truth” now in 2006. Sex symbol stuff aside, Shakira puts on a smoking hot show with a level of musicianship one doesn’t hear offten.
Love or hate his politics you gotta admire 
