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.

From FB this morning. "This is Michèle (Vic’s wife) posting on his behalf. The surgery went really well and he’s doing really well in recovery (quicker and better than expected). He says he will update you later when he can type."

So I have been here 20 years and have been playing Hamers since '78. It's been a minute since I had an NHD. Picked this up from Don yesterday on my drive down to Portland. Won't be home to plug it in till tomorrow night, but have been playing it in my hotel room, and this guitar is AWESOME! Not too bad on the eyes either. Thanks Don!

Saw this last week whilst I was idly scrolling through the used guitars on the GC website. It was listed by a Guitar Center in KY as a "Hamer USA STUDIO SUNBURST;" Looks to me like whoever took it in priced it as a mid-90s Studio, when the pictures clearly showed a 2005 Studio Custom. Was really not in the market for another guitar, but you know how that goes. It came in today and looks great! I was a little worried about it being shipped during the current cold snap, but it made it through in one piece. Ridiculously clean with a Hamer HSC. The action is a touch higher than I prefer ATM, but it plays and sound great. The only issue I can see is that the jack is starting to go, but that's easy enough to sort out. Here's a quick shot I took when I brought it in.

So after borrowing another HFC member’s Talladega, I knew I had to get one. I found this mint almost NOS 2007 model from a collector who rarely played it. It has a much softer V than the other one I borrowed, but I can fly on it and it feels like a vintage carve but with a soft V. And it is in jazzburst!!! Just like my Artist Korina! This is the finest and fastest Hamer I have ever owned. Impeccably built. I love the Double Ds and of course the Sustainblock and Fender scale. It is very light and I believe it has the extra chambering as it sounds that way when doing the tap test. I need to get it x-rayed to be sure. Simpply an outstanding playing and sounding guitar.

So a friend of mine is seling a Hamer Special in red. Someone gets in touch who has a couple of 80s Specials himself. Turns out he's someone I sold a b&w Hamer Special to a couple of years ago. And then I find out he recenlty bought a 1980 Hamer Special in opaque blue with a MATCHING HEADSTOCK from the first owner. I tell him to get get in touch should he ever consider selling it. Guess what, now it's mine. It wasn't cheap but it is in great condition, has had a fret dressing, has a nice medium neck, plays and sounds great. I believe the paint is all original, no undercoat, no other paint in the control cavity or under the trussrod cover). The body contour is slightly different to my 1981 Hamer Special, the lower cutaway less pronounced, so cool, I love it!

My buddy is out walking his dog and comes upon a yard sale. Amongst the ruins is this old POS....with a $20 tag on it. Realizing he has no cash on him, he sprints back to his apartment, grabs his wallet that contains his card so he can get to the ATM and back to the sale before it disappears. Apparently it was a slow sales day... He says everything in it dates to '67. I'm no expert on any of that, but the thing is disgustingly clean. He brought it over and - because he lives in an apartment - says "Turn it up". I did. OMFG. I instantly understood the Princeton magic. Absolutely glorious. For $20.

We're at an AirBnb about 30 miles south of La Crosse (home of Dave's first guitar emporium), so a visit is mandatory. My wife is with me this time, but she is aware of why we're there - to swap the Rainsong for something better suited to my hands. Although it's not a done deal, they have a suitable replacement (more on that later). We browsed the main floor but nothing says 'buy me', so we head upstairs to Dave's own stash. It's my 3rd time but her first, and for a non-guitarist she was surprisingly into it. We made a long slow lap around and were starting lap #2 when Tim (yep!) the website photographer strikes up a conversation. Little did we know that that conversation would lead to about a 2 hour guided HANDS-ON tour of Dave's personal gear. That's right - one after another guitars were being pulled down and put in my hands. At first I resisted but my wife chimes in, "When will you ever get another chance?" and with that Les Pauls from '54 thru '60, Strats from '54 thru '64, and Teles from '52 thru I forget were plucked from their perches and placed in my now-sweaty mitts, each with their own tale. Not sure if I was more in awe of holding them or more fascinated with their history. What a trip! The Explorer/Vee/Moderne backstory, the wall of Gretschs, the Gibson Switchmaster, more stuff hidden in the back - and the five Hamers in the corner, including a checkerboard '81 Special and Keef's Belushi Standard (which had an even better story of how it came to Dave). The '54 Tele found caseless in a farmhouse attic and tossed into a dumpster by a clueless renovator, only to be saved by said renovator's brother, had to be my favorite. That guitar was as weathered as you'd expect, and flat out gorgeous. My wife was right - it was an experience I'll never get again, and won't forget for as long as I live. This here doesn't begin to scratch the surface. Holy hell what a day.

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

I got to hang with Mike and Trish last week for a long-overdue visit. I did manage to get a peek at #0093 (now residing with a happy new owner in the Greater Chicago area), and was -as always - blown away. Here's a bit of her story so far...in pictures:

Three, all in the last month. The Monaco is inbound. Okay, I couldn’t resist the deal in the Eclipse XII. So four in the last month.

I honestly can't remember my last "new" guitar as most everything I have is some kind of mutt or project but after many years I finally pulled a guitar out of a shipping box that I didn't have to take apart and refinish. I've been very familiar with Sully Guitars for at least a decade now but never actually played one. The gamble paid off as I really like it. Anywho how about some pics? I had these silly knobs custom engraved... Sully ran with the basic white lady, Hobby Lobby decor schtick. I did not know he was going to do it but I laughed really hard. The model is called the Raven but with all this nonsense I'm spelling it "Reighvynn". And just to balance it out...

Two in 2025, to my surprise...wasn't palnned at all. A 1978 Sunburst and a 1980 Special, both in very good condition (the Sunburst had changed tuners at some point). They are the oldest guitars I have now. Everything Fender form the 1960s long gone and I don't think I will ever be able to afford one buying again (love the 1960s Jaguars with matching headstocks).

SOLD $5500- I bought this about a year ago. I believe it's chambered because it's light. Excellent condition, near mint- I can't find any marks of any kind or fret wear. The neck is fairly thick, thicker than any 2000s Hamer that I've played. Private message me for questions. We can work out shipping if necessary for the actual cost.

stumbled upon this a couple of hours ago, I think it's a '08 (6 digits, starts with 8), - I've never owned a Hamer newer than the late 90s until now. Pretty much mint other than looking like it has sat untouched for a long time, needs a fret polish pretty badly. Of course I couldn't resist, it wasn't stupid cheap, but attractively priced. I didn't have enough cash on me, so it's on layaway, and I can pick it up tomorrow

It didn't work when I got it, but with the help of fellow HFC'rs everything is working great now. I alway's wanted a 3 Hole DuoTone! Now I have one!! And it's beautiful!!

Hey All, You may have noticed that the HFC has been experiencing some performance issues lately. I did make a change today to move attachment storage to amazon s3 to help take some of the load and hopefully that's a good first step. As with many things these days, the hosting provider we’ve used for the past decade was sold, and the new owners are placing more restrictive limits on resources. The goal seems to be pushing customers into higher‑tier, and significantly more expensive, plans to maintain performance. On top of that, the cost of our existing service has increased to the point that I briefly considered returning to the 1990s, when I ran the HFC from a server in my basement on a dedicated line. Invision does offer a hosted option, but it comes with a significant annual cost and doesn’t include the base site. Determining the best path forward has been a challenge. Before jumping to any conclusions, this is simply a plea for understanding as I work through the options, not a request for donations to cover the cost increase. I’m trying to keep expenses low to ensure the long‑term future of the HFC. Many members have generously donated in the past and continue to help, and I’m grateful for that support, but right now I’m focused on exploring alternatives. It may even be that, after nearly 30 years, it’s time to move on, or let one of the existing private Facebook groups take over the discussion. That said, I know many of you are knowledgeable and full of great ideas. I’m an IT manager by day, but my teams do most of the magic now. I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how we might move forward. The HFC is important to me, and I know it is to many of you as well. I’ve known many of you for nearly 30 years, and I’m not giving up, just wanting to be transparent. Let’s work through this together. your friend, Ted Martin

Surgery went really well. Triple bypass done and in/out in 3 hours…

My only new Hamer this year is also my only new guitar this year, Kaki King's Newport Pro:

I, patiently, waited for #0004 for years. After about seven or eight offers, the original owner decided to sell it. Played it at practice tonight after tuning it up with some lemon oil and DR Blues .010 to .046. This is just a fantastic guitar. One of the best I've ever owned.

Here's my '73 Gibson Les Paul Custom. I got it as a gift from my dad in 1973. I still have it! Yeah, It's definitely not the same now - haha. Been through a million changes. Here's the story... It went through some crazy mods. First, I swapped out the pickups for 2 DiMarzio Super Distortion pickups. My dad drove me to Staten Island, NY and I went to Larry Dimarzio's house where he was selling them out of his basement!! I later added a middle PU a'la Peter Frampton. I then added an MXR Phase 90 inside the control cavity (Yeah, it actually fit) Added Grovers too (still on there) I stripped it down to natural like Mick Ronson and filled in the maple top and took out the middle PU. Kept it like that for a long time. It was a pretty nice sounding guitar! Under 10lbs too. I then decided to fix her up. I sent it to a luthier to completely grind off the maple top and 're-top' it with a Spalted Maple top. Recently, I added some custom-wound Gravelin pickups and 3rd refret by RS Guitarworks to Medium Jumbos. The only part still original is the tailpiece. Weird, but it's Super lightweight and actually makes a big difference in tone. I tried two other gold tailpieces and they didn't sound nearly as good, lightweight really made a difference. Here's a current pic I used for my CD insert on my album. Lastly, I made a nice truss cover to remind me of my dad.

All three of us in my blues band, SUIT, work for the same company – High End Systems – which is owned by ETC (Electronic Theatre Controls). Every year ETC has a company picnic at their headquarters in Middleton, Wisconsin (about 1,200 miles from where we live in Austin, Texas), and this year they invited us to play. 2025 is ETC's 50th anniversary year, so they really went all out this time. It was an all-day event, with about 1,000 people in attendance. Lots of food and drink (including alcohol for those of-age), activities for kids, door-prize drawings, etc. Throughout the day there were solo and duo performers on stage (all ETC employees), including a guy that did a tuba-based comedy set. We played from 6:00 - 7:15, followed by the headliner, The Grass Roots*. The whole thing culminated in a fifteen-minute fireworks show. *There are NO original members in the 2025 version of the Grass Roots, but this incarnation has been together since 2008 and they sounded great. Due to space constraints of making the trip, we brought a somewhat reduced setup. I used my Mesa Nomad 55 combo and my "B" pedalboard rather than my usual Mesa Mark V/Magnatone and "A" pedalboard rig; bass player Sean brought a small bass amp instead of his 1971 Kustom tuck-n-roll cab. I also limited myself (😆) to five guitars and one lap steel. Our drummer couldn’t make it, so we tapped another co-worker to fill in on drums. He’s a good drummer and used to play a lot but hadn’t picked up a pair of sticks in about a decade – so he was a little rusty. Through a whirlwind series of rehearsals we got him up to speed and he did a great job, although – full disclosure – his tempos tended to rush a bit. Here’s the setlist and what guitars I used: 08/02/25 – ETC Company Picnic – Setlist #S200 1-1 – Give Me Back My Wig (Hound Dog Taylor) – Tele 1-2 – Diggin’ My Potatoes (Washboard Sam) – Tele 1-3 – Bad to the Bone (George Thorogood) – Lappie 1-4 – License Plate Stomp (SUIT) – LPG-5 1-5 – Shake Your Money Maker (Elmore James) – Smokey 1-6 – She Put the Whammy on Me (Freddie King) – Smokey 1-7 – When the Levee Breaks (Kansas Joe McCoy & Memphis Minnie/Led Zeppelin) – Dan-O 1-8 – Down the Road a Piece (Will Bradley Trio) / Jesus Just Left Chicago (ZZ Top) – Smokey 1-9 – Money Collection (SUIT) – Smokey 1-10 – Let’s Work Together (Canned Heat) – Lappie 1-11 – Night Train (Tab Benoit) – Blackie Tele – 2009 Fender American Vintage 1952 Telecaster Reissue LPG-5 – 2013 Texas Box Guitars LPG-5 (open-G tuning) Lappie – 1955 Supro Student DeLuxe lap steel (open-G tuning) Smokey – 2020 Shishkov DC Custom Dan-O – 2000 Danelectro DC-12 (open-G tuning) Blackie – 1981 Hamer Special Nice big stage, great PA. The lighting was awesome, too (hey, it IS a lighting company), although most of our set was in bright daylight. The covered gear, tweed guitar amps and SWR cabs belong to The Grass Roots. During Freddie King's "She Put the Whammy on Me." Texas Box Guitars LPG-5, custom made for me using an old license plate from my 1986 Mustang. Another gratuitous shot of Shishkov 0092. 1955 Supro lap steel. On a walkabout with Blackie during Tab Benoit's "Night Train." The Grass Roots. No original members, but they sounded great. Fireworks.

Had a 50th Anniversary American Strat Neck and a Jerry Donahue pickup lying around. Bought some more parts and went with a tele body. Only way to use the neck and the pickups. Pitbull Audio had a Classic Series alder body on sale for $225, so away I went. Pretty happy with how it all came together. I am going to have to cut the pickguard back a little around the control panel to account for the offset from the round neck heel. Would have been easier to do that under the fretboard overhang, but I already drilled the holes when I thought about that. Otherwise, was fun to finally build a guitar.

Someone really likes Blitzes...

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.

Still one of my favorites - super light Korina body blank and RF neck from the early 2000s Gene Baker bankruptcy auction, a killer flame maple billet I had lying around for years, and a NOS 1980 DiMarzio PAF ran through Murkat and Stike to create the Baker Frankenjunior...or whatever you want to call it.

Thank you, Ted. The HFC isn't just important to me. The HFC changed my life. I have made several friendships here, the kind that I know I will have for the rest of my life. I would have never met these guys had there no HFC. I can't imagine there being no HFC, or worse, it moving to Facebook.

I once had an albeit brief conversation with Luciano Pavarotti, and since he was a singer and I used my voice to speak with him, I consider that to be a collaboration.

I got nothin'. Just wanted to show off the guitars..

One in:

I've been building these for a while. Just thought I'd offer one here. At this price you cannot build one like this for the same money. So I'm basically recovering the parts money to build something else. Built just like a 1964 ab763 Deluxe Reverb. All premium components. Heyboer Transformers, Sozo Blue Caps. New EH tubes! If you put in ANOS RCA/GE/ any vintage tube this hits all the marks. Still fantastic with EH tubes, Vintage tubes = Hot Apple pie!!! If you want the Duplicate Deluxe Reverb faceplate add $sold $sold shipped, Lower 48 only! PM Me if interested.

this was a really cool youtube short to start the day - Congrats Jeff!

I was working on #0091 tonight and was struck with this ingenious solution that Mike came up with to meet my request. I couldn't remember if I had posted about it here before... What do you do when you want it built like a spruce top/mahogany back Newport 90, but want to be able to access the control cavity from the back? If you cut in a cover plate, it will be visible thru the f-hole from the front, so Mike friction fit the cut out piece from the back, then mounted it to a regular metal cover. Looks like a normal cover plate for a solidbody from the back... And nearly invisible from the front. Thanks again, @Northfield

A 2004 NOS Monaco Superpro and a 1977 Sunburst 😁

Did some horse-trading at Real Guitars and a Hamer followed me home. Searching the web for specs I found this was once for sale at CMI. The black reflector knobs and serial # confirmed that. Besides the knobs, bone stock (replaced with the proper black tophats). After fretboard oiling, fret-polishing, strings/setup...this is practically new. I also replaced the straplok buttons with NOS, chrome Charvel buttons. The neck is a modern carve, sort of a medium-D, exactly my preference. Lightweight, with just a hint of neck-dive, which is negated by a leather strap. I be happy!

Hey Guys- up for sale is my 2002 Studio Custom in green quilt ! I love this guitar, but I'm just not playing guitar much at all these days, and work commitments mean this is sitting in the case all the time. This guitar is immaculate- I really 'babied' this one, just one tiny indentation in the lacquer near the belly- but I didn't notice it until today in the angled light. Obviously I'd prefer a UK sale, but I'm just really out of practice with sending guitars internationally at the moment..... so UK preferably......or anyone who would be happy shipping it out to someone internationally.... I will happily pick up the cost for UK shipping- or I can travel for the right sale- I've done that before - it's always nice to hand over a Hamer and see someones face light up when they open the case! Anyway, more about the guitar- I have the original amber knobs, but not the original bridge pickup I'm afraid. I was changed out to a Dimarzio Air Norton ( I had a habit a few years back of all my guitars having different sounding bridge pickups ). Dimarzio strap lock buttons installed too. Plays and sounds amazing, as you would expect! Regretting this already.....£1900. Let me know if there's any interest and I can post or send over more pics....obviously comes with the original hard case etc.. All the best, Dave

EDIT JUNE 12: Taking this off the board for now. Thanks for the support/ input/etc. my friends. Pic of how it looked before I cleaned it up and some more recent ones. Has a brass nut and I had to get a switch tip for it. The volume pot for the neck pickup cuts in and out and probably needs to be replaced. Looks like one strap button has been replaced. There are some dings that don't photograph well but I tried to show everything as clearly as I could. 3-piece neck. Humbucker rings are replacements but the originals are in the case. Price based on PPFF transaction. Message me here or leave a reply if you'd like to know more.

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:

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 👌👌👌

There will be a vinyl edition in few weeks, but you can already listen to our new album on Spotify and on Apple Music, plus many other streaming platforms. Spotify: Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/ca/album/dragonfly/1877171168 Now, for the guitars, these are the ones I used, per song —all the Hamers in bold typeface: VORTICE – “Warsongs” (2026) 1- Wake Up! - Hamer Korina Standard - Scheithauer Mayday V 2- Time to Rise - Hoyer import, Manlius Fat Goat R90 pickups 3- Weapons Rise - Apocryphal custom V—rhythm - Hamer Vector import, SD George Lynch V8 pickup—both leads and rhythm 4- The Strangest Dream - N/A 5- Dragonfly - Apocryphal custom V—rhythm - Scheithauer Mayday V—rhythm - Hamer Vector import, SD George Lynch V8 pickup —leads and rhythm 6- Mercenary - Hamer Korina Standard 7- Flying Free - Apocryphal custom V - Scheithauer Mayday V 8- Delilah - Apocryphal custom V 9- Wax Museum - Scheithauer Mayday V—rhythm - Hamer Standard 0204 (from Hell) —rhythm - Hamer Korina Standard—solo 1 - Apocryphal custom V—solo 2 10- Time to Rise (revisited) - N/A 11- No Quarrel - Hamer Korina Standard - Scheithauer Mayday V I didn’t play guitar on songs 4 and 10, as my bandmate arranged all the guitar parts for those, so it wasn’t necessary for me to add more noise. He didn’t play guitar on 5 either —in that case, I arranged all the guitar parts myself. We shared guitar duties in all the other songs. What else? Ah, @Jakeboy guested on one of our songs, but that one didn’t make the cut on this album, because it’s a pop song. It will be released eventually —sooner than later, promised! And last, but not least, I thanked the HFC in the booklet —it will be in the vinyl release: Enjoy! 🤘

...and a Happy Whatever-else-you-got-going-on.

Cross yer fingers---we're trying to get this out in time for the erstwhile-Arlington show, now being held in Mesquite. Here's the cover and a sample color page. Rev. Gibbons was responsible for the foreword, and folks who participated included Greg Martin, Eric Johnson, Jon Butcher, Butch Walker, Fred Newell, Davi Lee HOlt, Mats Jepson, Ray Benson, and others. Also got input from a few disreputable characters who are pretty well known on this forum. Spread the word! This has been al ong time coming but I'm pleased with how it turned out. The neurologist is still allowing me to drive, so I'm planning on peddling and signing copies at the Vintage Guitar Magazine space. Hope to see you there!

That's awesome! More pics are always cool. Starting your next build soon? 😉 Some of my favorite guitars/basses are built from parts. Just got a super cool one in from Stike in time for a gig last weekend, and it rawked:

2025 was a good year for Hamer in my house.. '93 Studio, 99 25th Anniversary, 2001 Artist Korina P90, 1996 Studio Custom

I did manage to bring home a new Hamer this year — a sunburst Daytona w/ a rosewood board. Been looking for one for pretty good while. So I'm up to four in my modest collection now:

2001 Korina Artist P90. I've been looking for one of these for a while at a reasonable price to go with my 25th Anniversary with humbuckers, and finally found one today at the Atlanta Vintage Guitar Show. All original, Except the tuners maybe. They are Schallers, but I thought these came with Grover's, really good original case, and it rocks. it just needed some good cleaning and a set-up. I have now added another keeper to the collection