cmatthes

Willcutt's been saying that about their huge Hamer stock for almost 3 years now too. One of the big issues facing builders out there right now is that the market for higher end guitars is not doing so well. There is a (rapidly) shrinking market of people with the ability to spend $3-$10k on a new custom guitar when there is a GLUT of other choices out there. FMIC is clearly feeling it...Gibson is feeling it...PRS is feeling it... PRS has already adjusted their brand strategy by focusing on a USA-made "workingman's guitar", just like Mike floated by in that thread from a few months ago. These are guitars that are 100% made in the USA and priced below $1,500. Solid stuff too, from what I've seen locally, and not the (mostly) junk that Gibson puts out under their "Faded" series. Not sure what that means for any future potential for Hamer, but as I understand it, most (if not all) of the stuff that was still in the Hamer part of the New Hartford shop has been either repurposed or moved along to the mothership out west. A current buyer of HAMER Guitars, USA would be buying the name, designs and trade dress. You're most likely not getting any equipment, tooling, parts or partially completed instruments or stock, and there truly is nothing left of the awesome wood stash that was pillaged a few years ago.

The Hamer tooling has already been packed off to Scottsdale.

I still believe it's in the hands, head and heart. The gear is such a small component in that equation, otherwise, there'd be a LOT more great guitarists out there!

This ROOLZ...

Todd - Let me know if you ever want to come up to DC and grab a Nats game with me sometime!

I dig the Richmond area. I'm really struggling with not taking a job with my company there right now, but I'm just not mobile right now. If I had known Jackass was moving there earlier...

Not likely. They'll probably get a refund of their deposit.

Not really.

I totally got your point. You are missing the OP's point. We don't want spec built guitars from China. We're talking about a quality built, USA made instrument.

No they did not.

Not at all interested.

"Looth-ee-yer" and "Wen-gey" Just like "Hay-mer".

Wow, Bob! How did I never see your Joe Strummer quote before?! (sorry for the derail)

I'm just glad Jackass got that truss rod cover installed right side up...

Mike Shishkov should have been running the marketing!!! Pics like this make a lot of people salivate...

That's exactly when the pricing STARTED to make sense. Huber, PRS, DeTempe and others were getting it and as far as I can tell none of them had about twenty firsts in the market place. The problem was the existing customers were use to cheap prices and they failed to get new upscale customers. Remember BMW used to just be another car brand before the mid 1980s, they wrote the book on how go upscale after the market views you as mid market. Maybe stopped making sense to their established customer base and the position they had developed in the marketplace. I totally get what they were trying to do, but it didn't work without the other legs of the stool: Endorser Visibility and robust marketing.

Why exactly was that the case, in your opinion? That's the million dollar question. I have a number of ideas, but nothing has been proven/confirmed. The world changed more than most of us realized in 2008, and I think that starting in 2006 or so, things started tapering off from the buying public in general, not just for Hamers, not just for guitars, and for most luxury/discretionary spending in general. That timing kind of coincided with Kaman's prepping for the ultimate sale to FMIC. They had to have known they were being courted for purchase at least a year or so in advance of the late 2007 transaction close, so would be doing all they could to dress up the numbers. If anybody here was paying attention (I'm sure some of us were), there were often two significant list list price hikes every year through most of the '00s. Not sure if that was Kaman corporate "testing the waters" to push the envelope to see just how much people would take before they stopped buying, some internal vision to quickly move Hamer to become a super-premium boutique brand, or just a natural rising of the pricing tides to go right along with the similar price increases from PRS, Gibson and everybody else back then. When the economy was cruising along at a rapid pace 15 to 10 years ago, everything else was jumping in price, so it would have been totally natural for Hamer/Kaman to do the same thing. It was most likely all of the above factors to some degree, along with maybe half a dozen more that shaped what ultimately happened. I really tire of everybody trying to pin it on one person or another, or blame FMIC's takeover as killing the brand. There were multiple cracks in the hull that eventually took the ship down, and to try to put the responsibility solely in one place shows a lack of understanding for how businesses work. I analyze the living and dying of businesses on a daily basis, and absent gross mismanagement or a catastrophic event, it is rarely one single person that kills the thing, and it is more likely a myriad of outside factors that combine for the perfect storm.

I have personally purchased plenty of new and custom ordered Hamers since 1989. I like a good deal as much as anybody, but I'll also save and make room for quality stuff that is exactly what I want as long as it is priced fairly. Hamer was the one company that I was able to do that with the exception of a few years near the end when the pricing stopped making sense (2008-2011). If I hadn't just made a ridiculously large college tuition payment for my son in August, 2012, I would have placed at least one custom order between then and December, as I had priced a few things out from Elduave's list. Timing isn't always your friend, I guess, but I have supported the brand for years.

The Standard will be shipped, I'm more than confident. Unfortunately, the fate of the other 4-5 guitars in the queue remains uncertain. The refund scenario will be the most likely. The crowdfunding scenario is simply not realistic. FMIC will not sell that asset. It costs them nothing to own the name and associated marks of a defunct brand. Although they are challenged for cashflow right now and in the foreseeable future, I just can't see that happening. It's corporate business. Emotional attachments and sentiment have little to no place in an environment driven solely by the bean counters looking to maximize shareholder earnings. It's not evil or bad, it's just unfortunate that they can't/won't consider the "human" factor like we all instinctively want them to do. That's not how business works when you get to a certain size. A more likely (and important) scenario would be to enthusiastically support the Hamer guys in whatever endeavor(s) they take on next as much as possible. They have always been the heart and soul of the guitars that mean so much to many of us, and anything we can hope to give back to them should definitely start there.

This makes me very sad.....do I need to send ninjas up to Connecticut? It'd be nice to even get a look at the list when they go off to auction (as I'm sure they will). I could certainly use some of that stuff, as I'm starting out... Those 600-800 are not Hamers - probably mostly Fender Acoustics (??). There was really nothing left Hamerwise when I was up there last fall apart from the few orders in progress that you've seen here and a celeb axe or two.

Wow....

They'll list the property and fixtures for sale after they've taken or repurposed the equipment/fixtures.