Leaderboard

... at least at my home: Recently I discovered this beautiful neon sign (not LED!). I suspect that it is from the 80s or 90s. I even had to buy a step-down transformer to be able to use it. Amazing that it survived all these years unharmed. With more than 40 Hamer guitars in my collection, it seemed to me to be the cherry on top. I hope you like it too.

It's about damn time. Everyone knows that guitarists have been clamoring for something new, something different, something unique. As long as it's mahogany with a maple top and shaped like a Les Paul/Strat/Tele and sounds like a Les Paul/Strat/Tele with the same control layout.

Hi Folks, First off this is not a plea for money, I appreciate all the support that people send, and I plan to keep the HFC going until it doesnt makes sense. Feel free to read as much or as little of this as you like but I wanted to be transparent on whats going on. As many of you may be aware we have been struggling over recent months. Our hosting company was sold last year and things continual are getting worse. The service being the most obvious as you may have noticed frequent 503 errors due to them reducing the amount of resources available. They have also increased our hosting prices by over 300%. furthermore, the plan we are on no longer works for us due to the resource demands from the board and the only option for staying is Virtal Private Server which cost exponentially more than of a traditional shared hosting account or offloading the board to invision cloud hosting but that alone is over $1000 per year and I dont want to lose the other pages. This really maked me miss the old days when I hosted the HFC on a throw away 386 running linux and apache in the basement of my inlaws office. Anyway, over the last few months I have been trying to find a situation that was reasonably affordable. I am planning to move hosts and am close to narrowing down my choice. The initial costs are reasonable as they give you a deal for a year then increase your monthly the next year. One of the issues is the size of the database as I have been retaining ALL posts from when we first moved to invision 20 years ago. I like the idea of having them available to search and revisit. However, I might need to drop quite a few or them. If I do, I will keep a copy and maybe bring it back up under an archive site. We'll see. I am working on keeping the recent stuff going first. What you need to know is this migration is going to happen soon, likely in the next two weeks. The site may be down or unavailable for a while as I migrate data. maybe days but I am hoping to avoid that. Please give me some grace on that as I do have a real job as well which has been very heavy. Lastly, I want to thank each and every one of you for being here. YOU are the HFC not that site and I am going to do my best to keep this clubhouse going as long as I can. your friend Ted Martin

Write an article about fake Gibsons for Vintage Guitar. Use a photo of your Chibson. Then advertise the guitar for sale as "featured in Vintage Guitar Magazine." You might even make a profit.

Been a minute since I've posted but thought I would drop a post to recognize our awesome HFC community. Our very own zenmindbegginer is being reunited with his former Hamer Monaco Elite, which you might've seen him making sonic love too in various clips for Seymour Duncan. Another member, Ting Ho Dung organized an effort on Facebook to raise over $1300 in donations and several from our great community jumped in to help. As you can imagine, Geoff is beyond grateful and stoked to be getting his axe back. Congrats to Geoff on reacquiring this beautiful instrument and hats off to Thorn for his generosity and the amazing anonymous members here for their donations! This is how it's done 👌👌👌

Someone really likes Blitzes...

As noted in a thread about a Peavey Dyna Bass I acquired a while back, I'll still poke my head into pawn shops on occasion if I'm out of town and ahead of schedule for some kind of business or medical appointment. There are certain sections of larger towns that have turned into combat zones, and I no longer look into shops in such areas. Made that (easy) decision after hearing nearby gunfire when I left such a store a few years back. So this '72 Micro-Frets Stage II came from an alternate location, and once again, I just stumbled into it. It's in Near-Mint condition and I paid too much for it but should be able to make it back if and when I flip it ...And it may be a while before I flip it on accounta this Maryland-made oddity has all sort of cool attributes and innovations: A "Calibrato" vibrato (feels like a Mosrite), a tuneable nut, and a reportedly-Bill-Lawrence-designed "Hi-Fi" circuit that suppresses 20% of the coil windings to offer a switchable tone shift. Neck profile feels like a Mosrite as well (YMMV), Instrument is fully original. Moreover, It's got the original plush-line hard case, instructions, and a November 1972 newsletter...checking out case candy is always a cool experience. Pickups are P-90ish (IMO) and it plays like butter. Micro-Frets only made about 3000 instruments during its initial existence. Finding one this nice from that era is probably a rare experience. HFC members from the Old Line State can probably relate.

speaking of crazy, pulled this out of the case this morning and decided I'm not selling it anymore. I waited too long to find an artist this nice, and I'm gonna keep it for now.

OK, let’s do this: I’m selling my Hamer USA Standard Custom, built in 2007. It’s in pristine condition, complete with the original hardshell case, COA, and case candy. You guys know what these things are, so, I’ll spare you the blah-blah. Yet, worth mentioning it’s transparent red and features a highly figured flame maple top and matching headstock veneer. IMPORTANT: The pickups are Seymour Duncan JB & 59, but aren’t the ones that came originally with the guitar —I never had those. These pups do sound amazing though, you know this combo is a safe bet. Now the price: 7,500 USD, shipped in the continental US —firm. Thanks for watching!

Give me shred til I’m dead…

Nice pair of Chicago made cuties. My 1979 Hamer Standard and 1979 Dean Z. Post up some vintage goodness for all to enjoy! 😎👍❤️🏁

A recent industrial hygiene study of the Gibson plant has determined a strongly correlated root cause of nearly all QC issues. A photo montage accompanying the report provides clues: A 12,465 page report from the study concludes very succinctly, "Ladies and gentlemen, if we could put our finger on just one primary issue, that would be: it's dark. I mean, really, really dark. We've never seen a production environment with such poor lighting." The report has been published to the Board of Directors. An action committee is anticipated.

I posted a while back I had bought a beautiful 1994 USA DuoTone. Inititially I was suspect, I could tell this guitar had been cased for a long time. Electronics didn't work, fret board and bridge where super dry. I gotta say after giving this guitar some love a clean up/fix up full set up it's one of the finest guitars I own. Incredible playability and tone. What a fantastic job Hamer did building these in the mid 90's. I absolutely love it!!!

Pics of how it looked when I got it and how it looks now. Prefer to meet in person driving distance from DC area. Guitar and case are all original to the best of my knowledge, with the exception of the switch tip and possibly the brass nut. The volume pot for the neck pickup cuts in and out and probably needs to be replaced. I tried to clean it up with DeoxIT without success. There are some dings that don't photograph well, but nothing major in my opinion. This one has the 3-piece neck. The humbucker mounting rings are replacements that I thought matched the binding better, but the originals are in the case. I will follow up with more pics and will attempt some neck measurements if I can find my calipers.

Ting Ho Dung has confirmed the Monaco Elite has landed and zenmindbegginer is a very happy dude right now. Hopefully he'll stop by the HFC sometime soon to share a quick pic or video of it in action. Thanks to Thorn for facilitating this transaction and to the HFC members who contributed to this effort. And congrats again Geoff on reacquiring that badass guitar! Hope to see it in action soon 🤘🤘

Or... Wife: You have to start selling some guitars. Husband: OK, I'll try.

Musikraft neck is in. Beautiful chunk of wood.

This is what happens when the board and senior management are just investors who don’t really understand what they sell.

I got to hang out with him and he took us through his touring guitar racks and let us monkey around with and shoot pics of his gear for the Hamer book. He couldn’t have been a nicer guy, nor more generous with his time. I saw him at a NAMM show 5-6 months later, and he remembered me without any prompting and wanted to know if the pics came out okay or if we needed anything else. Super talented guy, and he is so much more than just “that guy in Gwen Stefani’s old band”. I am hoping for the best for him.

I feel fortunate. Nothing new to share though. Feel free to reply with some of your own favorites, even if you have already shared them. And Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate.

After tons of hours and thousands of co-pilot messages (amazing really) to figure out the new host created a broken VPS. The site should be back and better than ever. Beat it up and let me know what you find. That said. IPB message board we use has become bloated and is bugging me to constantly buy updates and move to their cloud services. It's to the point that I am ready to jump to another forum product. I am not planning on doing it this week. But likely in the future. If you are interested check out xenforo, its lighter weight, has a very similar feature set and much more appealing licensing. Thanks all for your patience. I appreciate every member of the first and best damn guitar forum on the internet for over 30 years your friend Ted Martin For those that have no clue what I am referring to see the back story here:

Did Gene go to stomp on a pedal and stomp on your foot by accident? 😁

Good News! I have a reasonable host and am in the process of setting things up. Fingers crossed it goes well. I'll keep you posted. So far, its been a grind, but so good. Cant wait to ditch this crappy host

Thanks for EVERYTHING you do behind the scenes and right out in the open here for the HFC! I can’t believe that I’ve been on this board for close to half my life, but it’s all because of you taking the plunge and making it happen. I think most of us here have made great friends, bandmates and even adopted siblings. It truly is (and has always been) the best hangout on the dubayew dubayew dubayew. You rock, Ted!

How about a pair of LEs: 25th and 30th Anniversaries.

A total knucklehead got banned from here for trying to pass one of those off as the real thing when he 100% knew better. That was the last straw after he had proven himself to be a bit of a scammer and just overall weirdness.

Already at the painter's for this:

Still got mine, including the sustainblock trem arm hardware.

Kurt made one for Brad Whitford and one other for a guy in New York (he can't tell me). Both were creamsicle orange. Mine's a different color...

As they say, health forces sale. This is a '95 Eclipse 12 in very good shape. I waited a long time to get my mitts on one and it was well used but never abused, came with me to every show for years but was only used on a few songs every night. It was originally owned by the always tasteful Stevie mf'in Clay of Grumpy Old Men and I bought it through the mighty Greg Platzer. Evidently, Steve and I shared the opinion that the big chrome pickup surrounds on Eclipses were a tad too blingy. Greg fixed that with some classy, custom tortoiseshell rings and TRC. I fixed the balance issue commonly found on 12'ers with pearloid tuner buttons (originals in case) which also classed it up a little and those couple of ounces really make a difference. No breaks, major repairs or stories. There is one eraser-sized dimple (I tried to photograph it and couldn't) above the pickups on the front. When I bought it, I commented to Greg that I now had to search for coolerbetterfaster pickups. He recommended I live with the stock ones for a while. Good call. All the classic 12'er tones are in there. No regrets. $1,350 or near offer plus actual shipping. Shipping estimate provided once we have a deal. PPFF preferred, my bank isn't set up for Venmo, etc. CONUS only, packed to withstand a regional thermonuclear conflict 🤣. I'd GREATLY prefer a meet 'n' greet to hand it off if you're within a day trip driving distance of Dayton, OH This is a nice one, I hate to see it go. E-me at tomteriffic1952@woh.rr.com

Big chunk of wood!...............I owned 2 of them back in my fusion days. One I custom ordered from Gibson and the other I bought from "Pete's Guitar" in St Paul Mn. The original design from 1958 - 1962 are the real collector's item. I played one long, long ago at a guitar show. It had a mandolin on top and a six string on the bottom, but Gibson would let you custom order different configurations. Here is a photo my brother took of me back in the early 1970s.

Just saw this nice USA Artist at Chicago Music Exchange. Nice price too. Great workhorse axes! https://www.chicagomusicexchange.com/products/hamer-usa-artist-natural-2507819

First pic is from 2007. The second is from 2023.

Some more pics:

More pics:

Took this picture this very morning in situ as the sun was just beginning to shine. Was up late practicing, "No More Mr Nice Guy," through the DenHur Derluxe+ with the RC Booster in front. Sounded great! Awesome hand wired amp by a new friend who I am grateful for on this Easter morning. @Dutchman

I totally dig these Blitzs 🤩 Here are mine

You can probably have one made for the cost of what... four Rush concert tickets?

Just don't take the gold waist chain off and you should be fine 😳

Hamer Vector Flying V 1985 - Red and Black Zulu Bengal Tiger Finish Electric GUI https://reverb.com/item/93062934?utm_source=android-app&utm_medium=android-share&utm_campaign=listing&utm_content=93062934 Honestly, this is not a bad deal considering 20 plus years ago these were averaging selling at $3,500 and this one is quite unique and are getting super super rare... I'm not into Kahlers, but if I were and had the money 🤷

It just reveals the demographic that uses it, which I think it's safe to say is a different demographic than the one that uses the HFC forums.

RE: 50 years "..and we're about to change that.", I got yer "change" right here: As inspired by the legendary house brand model for the largest national retailer back in the '60s, howzabout an amp-in-the-case with the output of a Marshall stack?

Happy Easter! A somewhat later reply as i got overly excited by the 4digit V in the other thread. I hope we'll ge to see more of it (I'm not buying). Here's a shot from the rehearsal room with an orange rocker 30 as a backdrop and the 1980 opaque blue matching headstock special.

(Photo stolen from Graffiti Yellow, 2019)

4 Digit Vector, that is pretty damn cool.

Happy Easter Bunny! 🐣

this is on layaway, I can pick it up next time I'm up that way. They sweetened the deal enough to make me wait (the store employees get some sort of bonus if they get enough layaways at the end of each month, so it's common to get a better discount if bought on layaway). '89, mostly just dirty and neglected, the funny thing is that it's much easier to assume it's a real one if it's dirty enough, and I think all the fakes have the serial on the back of the headstock instead of the neck plate like the earlier ones. I had a desert yellow one a while back, and or course I should have kept it, this eases my pain quite a bit