cmatthes

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.

Yes, if you count the rows of polepieces on the neck pickup.

I'm watching this one like a hawk... It's a super cool Standard, for sure even though I'm not in the market!!

It's essentially the same as a red-lined Standard/Blitz case. There were black-lined versions later in the run in the later '80s.

They built one for Nielsen (it's in his "Guitars of the Stars, Vol. 1" book from 1993), and this one that I know of. Formerly in the Fung collection, as I recall?

Those are actually fairly common. Not remotely as rare as a USA Scarab case from the 80s, so if you can't find an original one, it would be worth a go...

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

Point One: Only needing one Tele? Crazy talk! Point Two: This is a SMOKING deal!

These guys are definitely on my “must see” list…

FMIC just won a pretty significant COPYRIGHT case in the EU Courts:

No. Again. The Diablo Hamer didn’t leave the factory anything like that. Also, Gibson built Rick 3 Explorers and 3 Flying Vs several years ago, after the demise of Hamer. Rick gave (or sold/traded) one of those to the guy who found the Tour prop Eye. It wasn’t a Gibson copy of a Hamer, just a checkerboard finished, off the line Flying V. I’m not sure Diablo cares to know the truth if it would mess up their sale.

Ha! No, that’s Mark’s shop and one of his cabs.

No. Rick didn’t give somebody a checkerboard Hamer V. He gave them one of the three checkerboard Flying Vs that Gibson gave him close to a decade ago. He never really played any of those - live or otherwise, and although I’ve seen him show up at a Rock’n Vodka event a time or two wit one of the marching checkerboard Explorers that Gibson also gave him at the same time, I can’t say that I’ve ever seen him playing any of those onstage either. Although he hasn’t bashed them, the fact that he won’t play them, but has given a few away kind of speaks volumes about how they aren’t his Hamers. Rick does have a dead on copy of his Checkerboard Hamer V that was built by Mark Grant in the fall of 2022 (along with a second one built for Michael Adamany), and he’s been playing that live a good bit and it shows up regularly in his stage rack. It was built using his original V as a template and for measurements. His original hasn’t been onstage since the very early ‘80s. It currently resides at the Rockford Hard Rock Casino. The Reverb one has long been confirmed as a conversion by two of the people who would know (one is actually named “Hamer”), and I remember seeing it listed for sale in a VG classified in the ‘90s. It’s really cool, but not one of Rick’s and it didn’t leave the factory like that,

There are others, but these are closer to the top of the photo library…

I’d take it for $350. if somebody paid ME $350 to take it, that is.

Agreed - that sounds excessive for a 7-9 hour drive!

Without a doubt! It’s of little news to most people here that I’m a big ol’ TVJ fan, and although I don’t have an application for one of these boys just yet, no doubt I will.

Aw man! Sorry to keep you waiting!!

Well done!

They were only in the catalog for a couple of years. I get what they were trying to do - it was the age of rack-mounted processors and all that garbage - but they didn’t sell all that well.

It's a Korean SAT/Import - not a USA model. I had to laugh at the "Randy Rhoads" signature on a guitar that was built a couple of decades after he died...who knew he had a time machine?!

If you knew “The Maestro”, then that horrid piece of ugly would make perfect sense. Not saying it would be right, but you’d understand…

Because we don't give airtime to people who have been confirmed as scamming any of our members. People can go other places for that.