Hi everyone!

Team Dejawu is home safe and sound after a very successful weekend at the Guitar Summit in Mannheim! In this week’s blog, we’ll tell you all about it. This year, Gitarre&Bass organized the third edition of the Guitar Summit at the Rosengarten Congress Center in Mannheim. Europe’s biggest guitar show attracted more than 8600 visitors this year, a 40% increase compared to last year! At the show, you can find everything related to guitars and basses, from the most eccentric custom guitar builds, to amplifiers, pickups, hardware, guitar straps, picks, strings, custom cables and so on. With over 470 brands present at the show, 100+ workshops on 7 stages, 16 masterclasses and 2 full concert nights, the Guitar Summit is a true Walhalla for any guitar lover. Whether you play the guitar yourself or not, that doesn’t matter.

On Thursday morning the 26th, we left for Mannheim. It’s a 400km drive for us, so that is perfectly doable. Besides, it is always great fun to go out with my dad. Last year October, we spent almost one month in China together, so 4 days in Mannheim is a piece of cake ;) When we arrived in Mannheim, we first picked up a rental car at the airport since the ceiling of the parking garage situated below the Rosengarten Congress Center is too low for our camper van. We have to admit that the dashboard of the rental car looked more like a helicopter cockpit and it took us quite a while to get the thing started. This car was equipped with so many ‘conveniences’, as if we are not able bodied people anymore that can move their own arms and legs. Anyway, after we picked up the rental car/spaceship, we drove to the Campingplatz Mannheim Strandbad where we would leave our camper van. Our family has always preferred to go out camping rather than staying in (luxurious) hotels, so why do it differently this time? Besides, the owners of this campsite are very friendly, so its a great place to stay. We packed our stuff and our bag with sandwiches and coffee into the spaceship and headed to the show to start building up our booth.

The Rosengarten Congress Center is a perfect venue for the Guitar Summit to be organized and the atmosphere and entourage are unlike any other show we have ever attended. Once there, it was rather hectic as all exhibitors tried to get their stuff from the parking deck up to the exhibition floors using two small elevators that did not seem to go to all floors. Our booth was at the second floor (I think), amidst many other custom guitar builders and boutique shops. Everyone doing something completely different and unique (more about that later).

It was the first time for us to join the Guitar Summit, so we were a bit nervous and unsure what to expect. The show takes three days, from 11am to7pm, so we had some quite intense days ahead of us. In the days before the show, we were still thinking of how to make sure people could actually find us on the show. Even though we do have our very own Dejawu t-shirts, we felt we needed something else. Bea and I decided to take the matter in our own hands and painted our own Dejawu sign/banner. We have to admit that we were secretly very proud of the end result. Nothing fancy, but still nevertheless hand made with love. A very nice spot on a corner was assigned to us, and our personally made sign really stood out. We were ready for three days of Guitar Summit, let the visitors come!

Derk Jan trying to fight greasy fingerprints.

Almost immediately after the doors opened, the first visitors came to our stand. Apparently, there were not many other exhibitors with guitars like ours, so our booth attracted a lot of attention. Especially the two Jazz models we brought to the show turned out to be very popular amongst the public. Of course, it is nice to receive so many compliments, but above all, we were really happy that Wu Dongming receives the recognition for his outstanding craftsmanship that he deserves. After all, jazz guitars are Dongming’s expertise. We hope we are doing a good job in representing his work in his absence. The hours flew by and before we knew it, the day was over. The first day of the Guitar Summit was rather overwhelming, but certainly in a good way.

What we particularly liked is that the Guitar Summit offers a stage for many small and not very well-known guitar builders and brands. This means that besides the big guys like Fender, Gibson, Yamaha and Ibanez, there is so much more to discover. Europe is home to many great guitar builders with outstanding skills that truly deserve to be in the spotlights. It was very nice to see how well fellow exhibitors and colleague guitars builders got along so well. Unfortunately, it is impossible to mention everyone here, but that does not mean they weren’t worth mentioning.

For example, Marco from Bernasconi Guitars (Switzerland). I would really recommend checking out his website. Besides beautiful guitars, the website itself is really worth a look. Like most of our fellow exhibitors on the second floor, Bernasconi builds custom guitars. What I particularly like about Bernasconi, is that they often make use of "Reclaimed Wood" or simply old wood. They find this wood basically everywhere and nowhere, making sure no wood goes wasted. They find their materials through specialized dealers or simply through active searching or coincidence. In this way, they aim support the protection of the rain forest and sustainable use of woods and materials.

And than, our super friendly neighbors from Eldorado Guitars (Switzerland). Alex Radovanovic accompanied by his friend Kelvin Bullen, designs and builds his own guitars, making use of many recycled materials. His new website will be live and running in a few weeks’ time, so keep posted! In the meantime, you can check out his Facebook page for really cool pictures.

The second day on the Guitar Summit was less overwhelming, even though it was even busier than the day before. We were equipped with a big bag full of nice things to eat and drink (Bea took very good care of us) and after a very successful first day we were confident we would also rock it on Saturday. As expected, we hardly had any time to properly eat or drink, it was that busy!

It was great meeting Werner Wende from Nazangi Stromgitarren (Germany). Nazangi builds guitars according to his own designs, without using designs of other manufacturers. Nazangi aims to make use of local woods and hardware as much as possible. Strings from Pyramid, pickups from Rübezahl and hardware from Schaller, ABM and Schertler are used. As far as possible, everything is done by hand. Wood shavers (is that a word?) rasps and saws are the preferred tools. I was also really impressed by the work of Patrick Kocheise of Kopain Guitars (Germany). His guitars are completely made by himself, woodwork, varnishing, pickups etc. Patrick has a really cool style so make sure to check out his work! Many great people, very nice conversations and guitar plays later, we suddenly sat outside on the terras of a cosy restaurant in Mannheim, eating roast chicken and pommes frites, drinking a beer. What else do I need to say!?

Sunday was a bit more relaxed than the two days before. Luckily, Uwe, our German friend of Schmidt Gitarrenbau was also present, never a dull moment (same goes for his guitars, check them out)! On Sunday, we also met Pierre Journel from The Guitar Channel (La Chaine Guitare). The Guitar Channel is a subscription platform that offers really cool guitar related content. It allows guitar lovers all over the world to discover podcasts, interviews, guitar reviews, masterclasses and much more. If you have not heard about this platform yet, make sure to check it out! We were honored that Pierre wanted to do an interview with Derk Jan about our guitars! More about that coming soon!

Looking for nice (small) Guitar Stores and Boutique Shops in Germany that sell something different than the standard stuff? Here’s a few worth visiting: Musik Butik in Darstadt, Frank’s Guitar Boutique in Mannheim, Liberty Music in Neustadt.

Last but not least, Jordi @TheDutchDukeBand, can’t thank you enough for helping us out! We were happy to have some extra hands on the last day and to have someone with endless enthusiasm. It was great fun to meet you!

Overall, attending the Guitar Summit was a great experience. It is great to see that many guitar builders highly value the use of sustainable, certified woods and recycled materials. Keep up the good work guys! Cherry on the cake: we took more guitars to the show than we took back home ;) We would like to thank everyone again who made this great event possible, and we are looking forward to coming back next year!

The Guitar Summit is having (a) Dejawu!

Team Dejawu