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Dating imported Hamers?


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I just picked up an imported Sunburst P90 that I'm quite happy with, but I'm having a hard time figuring out when it was made.  There doesn't seem to be a ton of info out there about the imported stuff, and what info I do find doesn't seem to include my particular guitar.

My headstock just says "Hamer" without "XT" or any other identifier on it.  Likewise, the truss rod cover is blank, without any sort of model identification.  The back side of the headstock has a silkscreen with the serial number and "Made in Indonesia" directly below .  My understanding from what I could find was that the early imports had the "Hamer" headstock with no additional identification, but all later imports (which would include the Indonesian models) had either something written under the logo or something written on the truss rod cover.  I suppose it's possible that the truss rod cover was changed at some point, but considering this guitar looks brand new and doesn't even have visible fret wear, I doubt that it's been modified in any way.

So, back to my question:  Does anybody have a timeline of models & manufacture location for the imported stuff?

By the way, here's a pic of the guitar:

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There is no way to date an import Hamer based on the serial number - those schemes were pretty random throughout, and USA Hamer had very little to do (really nothing) with the Hamer-branded imports sold by KAMAN.

That being said, there was a fairly short window of production time for these, starting in the early 1990s to recently, so the best way to get an approximate date of manufacture is by reviewing the particular features and matching that up with a particular catalog model from that era.

The Sunburst Archtop P-90 that you have was from a period in the mid-2000s, probably the year before production switched over to the Chinese XTs.  If I'm throwing a date out there, I'd say 2007?  I can check the archives, but that's about as close as I can get purely from memory as to when that model was introduced.

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I took a couple more pics today in hopes that somebody can help me determine the build date.  From what I've seen so far, the earliest Korean models had this type headstock logo & truss rod cover, and the newest 2017 Indonesian models do too.  Everything in between that I've found has additional model info on the logo or truss rod cover.

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41570168451_c58eca2430_c.jpg

 

 

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