Trends in musical instruments are not uncommon today. Usually they start out pretty slow when one company incorporates a new idea, and then other companies slowly follow making small changes, thus the evolution of a new product begins. At the NAMM show in Anaheim 2008, a new trend seemed to be developing, and the interesting part is how fast this one seems to be moving. Companies that have built their name in solely acoustic guitars have begun to move into the solid body electric guitar realm.

The most marketed and well known of these is the new Taylor solid body guitar. I knew of this guitar well before the NAMM show, but as I visited other high end acoustic guitar builders, I saw two more companies that introduced solid body electrics for the first time. Both Wechter Guitars and Larrivee Guitars were showing these new guitars, and to my amazement, these guitars were high end, well built, and thought out.

The other interesting part of this event is the fact that these are not cheap copies of guitars already on the market. I did not get a chance to check out the Larivee guitar as long as I would liked to, but both the Taylor models and the Wechter models have incorporated brand new proprietary pickups as well as unique body shapes styles for comfort in playing.

At this point, I believe that this is a valuable trend based on the fact that these companies are pushing the limits of electric guitar technology, which I believe for the most part has been a little stagnant for awhile with the exception of a few electric guitar manufacturers. It will be exciting to continue to see how this plays out, and if a primarily acoustic guitar manufacturer will be able to make inroads into a market that has been dominated by large companies like Fender and Gibson for so many years.