My Favorite Booth at CES 2011

The South Hall Lower Level at the Las Vegas Convention Center was filled with sounds like I imagine it would be like if everyone carried boom boxes instead of iPods. Every imaginable musical noise, and some not so musical, emanated from aptly named booths such as Earthquake Sound Corporation, Zound Industries, Sonic Emotion, and Skull Candy. But one booth usually only produced a faint scratching and jingling din. That would be the Gibson guitar booth, where there would always be a dozen or so smiling guitar players wearing clunky headphones emanating from black boxes attached to electric guitars. "Picking and grinning" may be a trite expression, but it was happening continually at booth 20949. I joined them a few times (maybe more) myself, not being able to resist the re-creations of the legendary Les Pauls and the amazing self-tuning, bluetooth-enabled Firebird. Gibson bought a lot of other products, aside from the demos, and shared the booth with corporate stable mates Wurlitzer, Dobro, Epiphone, and others, but I could never get past the those guitars. Maybe next year.