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Bad Hamers?


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Guest pirateflynn

Thanks for the reply Greg. My experiance has been that Hamer guitars are very consistant but you see many more than I.

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A portion of my business is international. Some of the most polite and most rude customers were from these sales. Everything from wanting the item for below cost to argueing over the cost of shipping etc. It ususally stops when I point out what a great bargain the item is when buying it from the USA.

Just like in the USA there are plenty of people that want to test your patience and time. It is all part of the biz. I have priced out orders and had people then never return my e mails and go to other vendors with my prices. It is all part of the game.

If I thought every item I shipped and never heard back from the buyer was a bad deal then I would be in an asylum. Yes it is REALLY cool to hear back from a satisfied customer but I don't expect it.

I can think of an incident recently where I found out that someone was not exactly happy with a custom order when they posted on the message board. I immediately contact them and made an effort to get their issue resolved. Hopefully there will be a happy resolution. But I did not even know about the issue until I read a post. I did not have to act but I felt obligated to try to make it right and acted accordingly.

If I could figure it all out I would probably be on tv with trump taking on apprentices.

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Of course there are bad Hamers--Hamer is not immune to the law of averages. For example, I played a particularly heavy and dead sounding Studio Custom at a store of national renown about 2 years ago. I congratulated the guy who eventually bought it when I 'ran into' him on one of these internet boards. He thought he found a gem; I thought it sucked ass. I've played enough guitars over the decades to know a dud when I play one and this one was clearly a dud. But I just couldn't burst the guy's bubble, so to speak.

As always, YMMV.

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I always thought my FM looks a little better than it sounds. My bass player says it has a great lead tone but isn't stellar as a rythmn guitar, that probably sizes it up. Other that being a little flat sounding IMO it's plays well and doesn't have any bizzare issues. I probably should sell it but I never seem to get the time. BTW, it's kinda of nice being a newbie again, that doesn't happen much in life.

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I really dont think that its a matter of a "bad" Hamer being poorly built. Im sure that on average they are superior to many of the other manufacturers guitars. I think that you never know how each piece of wood that goes into the guitar will affect the whole or how it will sound as a collection of parts. Sure the wood is, from appearance good high quality pieces its just somewhat of a fluke that when they are assembled into a complete guitar they just dont sound that great.

Im betting too that if the electronics where changed out it might breath new life into a formerly lifeless guitar.

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my first Hamer sucked, it was an early Sunburst , blk, crowned and bound, would not stay in tune for more than 3 minutes , horrible. I bought it used when I was 22 , I was crushed when I could'nt get through a gig w/ it. I've heard some awful weak 12th fret G's out there in Hamerland too , but these are problems that occur in every brand, every model, you just can't get it right 100% of the time and the wood does have a mind of it's own.

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To me the 'bad Hamer' period was around '91-'93, when they insisted on slapping skinny necks on their Studios and Specials. I stumbled on three of them in my dealings. Now I avoid Hamers from that time frame altogether.

Right now, the only 'dud' feature I have found consistently is the three way switch, which has an annoying habit of losing contact (the long flexible metal strip bends juuuuuuuust a bit too far).

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I've had two Hamers - a Phantom and a 25th Anniversary - that I just could not get to sound right. Maybe setup problems, maybe just not the right guitars for me, but even acoustically they were really thin and dead sounding. Both were attractive, well-built, and excellent players, they just sounded like hell (not in a good way) to me.

Coincidentally, both were tune-o-matic guitars and both were painted black, and to this day I'm wary of tune-o-matic bridges and opaque finishes.

As for "policy", there's no accounting for taste, and I imagine any company that tried would be in the red pretty quick. If they were broke I'm sure Hamer would have made good, but I wouldn't have tried sending them in because they were low on mojo.

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Guest Mike Lee

I've owned 2 dud Hamers and 5 keepers, so I'm doing OK.

My first dud was a custom ordered lefty '95 T-62. Complete trainwreck that should never have been built. In hindsight, Hamer just wasn't tooled up to make this guitar in lefty, and probably should have declined the order. I've told the story before, so I won't go over all the details again. Hamer fixed most of the issues, but I just never liked the tone. It was just too thin and bright and had no body, even after trying different pickups. I consigned it at Elderly Instruments and after it sold, it showed back up a few months later! This time with some more electronic modifications that must not have fixed the tone either.

My second dud was a used Mirage I that I paid a LOT for because it was so rare. Thin bright tone with no body again. Tried different pickups, bridges, and wiring, but never could get it to sound right. So I sold it on Ebay for about half what I paid.

I suppose lefty guitars are a bigger challenge because they are so far out of the normal process.\

Edited to Add:

Lots of guitars have a dead spot somewhere in the 11th-13th fret range on the G-string. I've seen it on Strats, Hamers, and a PRS EG. If it's on the 13th you may never notice it, but if it's on the 12th and you play in E a lot you really notice it. Changing headstock mass shifts the dead spot but doesn't always eliminate it. PRS solved the problem with it's extended "heel from hell", but it's not a big enough of a problem to make me buy PRS's instead of Hamers.

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...when this person called Hamer they suggested attaching a C-Clamp to the headstock as a remedy!...

LOL! :rolleyes:

Ya know, Groove Tubes makes a gadget to address that very problem, and while it reminds me a little of putting a C clamp on the headstock, it looks much more stylish.

FF_Shot_1.jpg

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I owned a 30th anniversary for over six months that I really loved...until it went head to head with a couple of other guitars that burned it like a frat-house bonfire. I have to openly admit that with the exception of pickup adjustments and some tinkering I didn't really go to any great length to eliminate the problem. I traded it and don't regret doing so for a second.

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there was a really bad review of the 30th from a guy in England that never came out , they just dropped it rather than have the guy pan it so much, part of it was piccune IMO ( inlays off center ) others were subjective ( uneven tone , weird overtone ) that made me wonder if the guy was just unacustomed to chambered guitars, at any rate, I've heard raves and pans, can they both be right? Probably as we all play and hear individually

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Guest Mike Lee

HHB,

Yes, G# is in the E major scale.

What I meant was if you play the E pentatonic minor or E blues scale at the 12th fret a lot (as many players do) a deadspot on the G-string at the 12 fret comes up a lot. But if the deadspot is at the 13th fret, and you don't play many Blues songs in F you may not notice it as much.

But if you aren't stuck in the blues box rut then it may be a bigger deal.

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Hey Mike, play that E-shape-overlap pentatonic box at the 12th fret and push the G to the G# on the Es and the G string.

New world of bluesymajorvoice scale, bro, and play 'em with a OD and hammer-on technique for full stungun effect.

* this message brought to you by the writer and contributing editor of Intelli-shred LOL! *

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Mike, many many many blues licks resolve to that G# , the very definition of blues is that major/minor resolution, it goes back to the "blue note" , African in heritage it's inbetween the minor and major third, , try bending that G up to almost G# , MUY bluesy

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Mike,  many many many blues licks resolve to that G# , the very definition of blues is that major/minor resolution, it goes back to the "blue note" , African in heritage it's inbetween the minor and major third,  , try bending that G up to almost G# , MUY bluesy

Bill, many many many many many blues licks just use it as a passing tone. Like in the intro to Johnny B. Goode, or in the intros to half of BB Kings songs, the opening lick of "hideaway," many places in the Crossroads solos.

:rolleyes:

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Interesting. I've owned my '93 Special for years now and never noticed the dead spot on the 13th fret before. Ignorance is bliss....

How common are dead spots on electric guitars in general and Hamers in particular? Are double cuts derived from the Gibson LP special (i.e. Double-cut LP, PRS Santana, Hamers....) especially vulnerable?

I wouldn't have noticed this over the course of my regular playing. While my P-90 Special does sound and play well in all other respects, I did notice some paint chipping around the neck joint. I was told that this was due to a stressed neck. Would this create dead spots? Incidently, at the time the guitar was a steal at $500 Cdn (about $350 US).

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Mike,  many many many blues licks resolve to that G# , the very definition of blues is that major/minor resolution, it goes back to the "blue note" , African in heritage it's inbetween the minor and major third,  , try bending that G up to almost G# , MUY bluesy

Bill, many many many many many blues licks just use it as a passing tone. Like in the intro to Johnny B. Goode, or in the intros to half of BB Kings songs, the opening lick of "hideaway," many places in the Crossroads solos.

:rolleyes:

it's more than a passing tone, it's part of a hybrid scale that most decent blues is based on, but feel free to ignore it

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Are there more than one "blue notes", formally speaking? I always thought the passing note between the 4th and 5th of the minor scale was the blue note. (ie, in Am pent I use, maybe overuse the Eb.)

Anyway, you guys have touched on my biggest pet peeve - folks who tell you to play in the key of X, assuming that *you'll* assume they mean X minor, and probably X minor pent. I don't have perfect pitch (especially under fire) so that's burned me more than once.

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Virtual,

The passing tone that you are speaking about is the flatted fifth-its the note that distinguishes the minor pentatonic from the "blues scale" and is often called the blues note.

The real blues note that is not part of any scale, and adds that distinctly blues quality, lies between the major and minor third.

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I never even thought of that, the blues scale flatted fifth is very bluesy but not the "blue" note , maybe cause you can't notate the microtone

What really keeps me up at night is the origin of the "blues scale" as it is normally taught in magazines, guitar books and by guitar teachers.

This scale should definitely include the major third. That note is found in the classic Elmore James slide lick (which makes it Robert Johnson's as well), swing blues, Chicago blues, Texas blues, rockabilly, you name it.

I guess they took it out because you cant play it over a minor chord. But isn't that why we have the minor pentatonic scale?

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