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Tell us about your non-Hamer and not custom-ordered preferred axe


zorrow

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Do you own a non-Hamer and non-CO guitar which is particularly appealing to you? If you do.... what do you like from it?

Here’s mine: a vintage Hoyer 5069 made in Germany in 1977. It has a quite chunky neck I find very comfortable. Its original Hoyer pickups are actually fat single-coils which adjust well to everything I needed to play while in my last gig, from rock to funk to reggae to latin to whatever —it can even handle metal! It was my main guitar from 2011 to 2014. I’ve stopped playing live, but I’m keeping this one. :) 

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Dillion something-or-other. I use it for Strat stuff because the in-between sounds are nice and thick. Nice full neck, too. Probably the best $300 (new) guitar I ever bought.

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This has taken my #1 spot. IIRC it was put together, painted, reliced by Kip Elder from Orlando's Hard Rock. Bridge is Callaham with shortened bar. Pickups are Peter Florance Voodoo something. Neck is old. I think the name was Fontaine. Possibly Pete Fontaine. Nice Brazilian board and clay dots. It sports a nice Fender decal. Plays super nice and sounds fantastic. This used to belong to @The Shark but he had it set up with humbuckers which were nice but I'm a Strat guy. 

ETA: Nice clay dots too.

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I've got two non-Hamer, non-custom favorites... shown here with a Studio Custom!

Love my ES-339. Not that I can play jazz, but when I fake it the guitar sounds better than I do. Great for blues and rock as well. I see a lot of online posts claiming 339s sound too much like a Les Paul and not enough like a 335. That's NOT my experience at all, especially played clean on the neck pickup. Great guitar.

Also love my EBMM Albert Lee. (Up until yesterday, I also had an Albert Lee HH.) It's a great Strat substitute. The vibrato works well, though I get a little warble because I like to float it. The oil/wax finish on the neck feels fantastic. I love the smaller body size - it hangs a little more to the right than a real Strat, and almost feels like a 24.75" scale though it's still 25.5".  The silent circuit works well. The neck and middle pickups are very Stratty; the bridge pickup can do a pretty good Tele impersonation. I've had 6 real Strats over the years, like this one much better. And it looks cool - someone described it as "George Jetson's Strat."

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'63-ish Silvertone. They came with Gibson-made mini-buckers and genuine Bigsbys. It's been re-sprayed here and there and has a non-original (ancient) Bigsby aluminum bridge and a repro pickguard (guard and TRC are off in this photo) and a great neck with low action.

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I bought a 2016 Gibson R8 Les Paul off of Reverb last fall and the guitar is killer. Haven't owned a Les Paul since the very early 80's and with all of the QC issues I have witnessed I was hesitant to buy any Gibson without playing it first. But I rolled the dice figuring that if it was a dog I could re-sell it.

Well a dog it is not. Different tone & sustain than any of my Hamers. Something about the neck/headstock angle perhaps? I really like the big neck and the one i got has a sweet top. My Phantom Custom is still my current #1, but this guitar had been coming to every gig and gets played.

 

 

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Hamer and Hoyer

Left is a made in Germany Hoyer Explorer from the end of the 70s, early 80s. I had been searching for one of those for almost a decade as Zorrow found one for me in Seattle in 2016. It has a neck head issue that I inked with wood glue. It’s all stable and solid. Blasphemy, original pickups had been swapped out for brass style Lace Alumitones. The pots are changed too to serve the pups. All hardware is brass. Strings are Thomastik Infeld Sliders and brass too. Compare to a Hamer, the guitar is very light weighting.

It’s a great player and gets picked here and there. A dream came true...

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3 hours ago, Ting Ho Dung said:

This has taken my #1 spot. IIRC it was put together, painted, reliced by Kip Elder from Orlando's Hard Rock. Bridge is Callaham with shortened bar. Pickups are Peter Florance Voodoo something. Neck is old. I think the name was Fontaine. Possibly Pete Fontaine. Nice Brazilian board and clay dots. It sports a nice Fender decal. Plays super nice and sounds fantastic. This used to belong to @The Shark but he had it set up with humbuckers which were nice but I'm a Strat guy. 

ETA: Nice clay dots too.

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That guitar sounds GREAT.  I found it addictive to play.  Very responsive.

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Stike's Iceman (formerly Serial's) is just a killah git-tar.  I'd get in line for that one, but I don't think that's leaving his grip while I'll still be playing!

On that note, I've got a couple guitars (Non Hamer/Non Custom Order) that were just decent "off the rack" instruments, not even expensive ones, that are over the top cool now and are just great players.

I've got this early 2000s regular 67 RI Flying Vee that I got off a local Craigslist deal.  It sat for $400 in its original state somehow.  It was the regular ol' trans cherry finish, but a 2-piece body and some decent wood and a super fast neck.  The pickups in it were original, but a former owner had swapped positions and just wasn't as good with an iron as he thought he was - the bridge pickup was about 1/2 volume and the switch was noisy, and jack even worse.  The perfect candidate for a beauty makeover!

I pulled a set of boxed, NOS gold Rio Grandes out of the parts stash, got the rest of the gold hardware together, a new Gibson pickguard (the old one was oddly hacked), dome-topped knobs, nice pots, and the rest of the bits together and boxed it all up.  I drove it down to Stike for one of those "surprise me" deals, just with a general category of color.  

A few months later, this stunner emerged from the chrysalis, and although I typically gravitate towards bigger neck profiles, this one plays like a dream.

 

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PRS 408, Indian Rosewood neck.  Covers pretty much everything I've looked for it to cover.  Found it at Experience PRS the year they announced it.  That table wasn't marked for sale, but I heard someone say "talk to your dealer".  Sure enough, he made it happen.  I wanted this particular one because its finish date was on my birthday - something I'd been looking for for a while.  Plays like a dream.  Very close second - goldtop DGT.

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1 hour ago, alantig said:

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PRS 408, Indian Rosewood neck.  Covers pretty much everything I've looked for it to cover.  Found it at Experience PRS the year they announced it.  That table wasn't marked for sale, but I heard someone say "talk to your dealer".  Sure enough, he made it happen.  I wanted this particular one because its finish date was on my birthday - something I'd been looking for for a while.  Plays like a dream.  Very close second - goldtop DGT.

Between the 408, the DGT and the 513. it was very hard for me to pick a favorite flavor. For me, the 513 won out, with the tiebreaker being the ability to call up a great "Strat" tone (IMO) as well as the other vintage and modern humbucking options. The use of FIVE single coil pickups was the key. I am still surprised more people did not pick up on it.

Still, as much as I keep TRYING to find something I like better, if I had to choose ONLY ONE, I have been predictably boring for the past 5 years or so......

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Even though I have TRIED others that are fancier, have more "upgrades", were more expensive and were better on paper, for some reason this one just seems to know what I want to play before I do and it just feels intuitive. Somehow the maple, mahogany, ebony and longer scale just works. Never had any guitar so well broken in to fit ME better. And that despite having come to me with a couple things that were almost certainly changed since it left Germany in 2006......The 3 way is reversed, as is the coil split switch.....I have adapted to it.

As some might expect, it does not mean I have completely stopped looking.......Hope to have something a bit different coming off the assembly bench  before summer is over......Inspired by "Old Blue" as well as the best parts of several Hamers. Hope to have a few more nice ones head out the door by then to make room......

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Two favorites, both acquired with the help of or directly from an HFC'r.  electric:  My '64 SG Jr., vetted and shipped by 0054.  Thanks again, Rodi!  I was looking for a pre-'65 for years.  All original with the exception of the pick guard and one tuner button.  No breaks or repairs.  Love it.  acoustic: My Taylor 612 purchased from Tom Terrific.  I play this one daily.  I may need an exception for this one because I believe Tom custom ordered it back in the day.  A real sweetheart of a guitar and great for finger picking.  You meet the nicest people on the HFC forum!

 

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I take two guitars to shows with this cover band my Newport with TV Jones and my Jazzmaster with Lollar’s and a Mastery bridge.

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Both are so unique, but can cover the other so well. I may plan on playing one all the way up to the sound check, then put the other one on at showtime and play it all night. 

 

I have another guitar, however, that has watched many another guitar come and go, my 2005 SG Classic with Mojotone P90s and a Bigsby B3. SG Classics aren’t the most sought after SGs out there, but this one has “it”. Tone, feel, playability... everything. I don’t play it in the band right now, and that makes me start seeing dollar signs when I look at it, but there’s no way I could ever sell it. I think the Newport or Jazzmaster would hit the block before it. 

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28 minutes ago, Greg G said:

Two favorites, both acquired with the help of or directly from an HFC'r.  electric:  My '64 SG Jr., vetted and shipped by 0054.  Thanks again, Rodi!  I was looking for a pre-'65 for years.  All original with the exception of the pick guard and one tuner button.  No breaks or repairs.  Love it. 

 

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Out of all the guitars I’ve sold, if I could have one back it would be my ‘64 Jr. What a guitar!

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I have to stand out favorites in my collection right now.

They're both very versatile guitars which allow me to cover A LOT of tonal ground with all the  humbucking/ single coil splitting options both offer.

For the Bluesy Rock/ Heavy rock  and hinting at Funk/ RnB tones, the '09 PRS DGT covers this for me.

For most rock, Funk, RnB, country, and most other styles, my newly acquired '03 Tom A Hollow T Drop Top handles these

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