cmatthes

Oh, F-you, Geoff!

"Cred" is what people who need to feel self-important about being a musician/music fan require in their idols. Of course, by the simple virtue of the fact that these people idolize other musicians/entertainers kind of reduces their "cred", but that's another story. It's just anti-hype. People need to move on - everybody has an opinion as to what is good music, who is a good/great musician, and what is cool. Guess what? Everybody is right...to themselves only. Listen to what you like, dig who you dig, and stop trying to convince everybody else that your opinion should be theirs. It shouldn't - you don't determine what's cool. Don't like it? Listen to the shit that moves you and avoid the other stuff. I personally liked Grohl's comment and took it for what it was/is. I appreciate people who cultivate their unique individual talents, and who do it with musical/compositional talent, not like the computer-generated video game-style fake out Autotune BS. That's MY opinion. Doesn't make the stuff I don't like bad just because I think it sucks.

This is a stone fact.

Please share the artists that you experts feel "legitimately" have "cred".

yep! Triple ditto!

Good call on Ritchie, Mark! Just getting ready to type that... This one is just for Kiz:

I have less than zero interest in that guitar.

It's got a '96 Serial Number. And a '96 Serial Number.

Geoff: The top neck is the one I got from you. Pretty sure Hamer never made any double Daytonas - that sort of sick idea is probably limited to my warped mind...

Sorry Muse - "On Fire" is a great VH song, and I totally dig your dedication and all, but "Ice Cream Man" still rules.

You knew I was waiting for that!

The LONG version of the story on this one actually goes back a few years, but since one of my 2011 resolutions was to finish a number of projects I had going, I actually made good on a few of those. Like many of us, I usually scan eBay for the bargains, sometimes late at night, and sometimes, after I've had a few. This has nearly all Hamer parts except for the body, pickguard and a switch. A couple years ago, I was bidding on a Daytona body that a guy in TN was selling. I asked him if he had any of the other parts, and he said he did, somewhere, but wasn't sure what remained. The body ended up going for a silly price, but a few weeks later, the seller emailed me saying he found a box with the original parts and the neck, and he really just needed to clear $75 on the deal. Pickups, knobs, neck, pots, etc. - pretty good deal. At the time, I had a spare '94 Maple Daytona neck lying around, and wasn't even sure if this incoming neck would turn out to be rosewood or another maple board. A few weeks later, also a late night eBay incident, I mistakenly typed in "Dubleneck" as a search term instead of "Doubleneck". Thankfully, the typo/bad spelling gods were smiling on me, and I scored an incredible 3.34 lb (!!!) solid 2pc White Korina Musikraft body for an opening bid that was less than 25% of what the seller had paid to have it custom made less than a year before (less than 1/2 the HFC-approved price). The body was a great find, flawlessly made, and just incredibly resonant. I happened to luck into a trade with Serial that got me an original (and very rare, apparently?) Daytona hardtail Wilkinson bridge. At that point, the wheels started turning, and I realized I had most of the parts to make an evil twin Daytona, but wasn't crazy about the whole "zebra" neck concept. I ended up shelving the project for a while, and actually sold the Maple Daytona neck. Geoff/Zenmidbeginner came to the rescue with a Rosewood boarded Daytona neck that he had outbid me on from some guy in WV earlier. We struck a deal, and the day before that arrived, I snagged a set of new condition PhatCats that some Gear Pager had yanked out of his '00 Newport the day he brought it home. I took the whole deal up to the incredible Mike Forrester at Forrester Kustoms (just north of Baltimore), and he did some detail routing to match one of my Daytona bodies (recessed backplate, contour, control routing, PhatCat routes, string through for the hardtail and he got the neck pockets to fit the Hamer necks like they were made for each other). My funds were going towards getting another favorite guitar refinned by Stike (an old Jazzmaster), so I boxed this one up yet again for a while. My wife/kids surprised me for my birthday last year by sending it out to Marty Bell for an Ice Blue Metalflake finish. A few other things ended up taking priority over finishing this one (including yet another ROWYCO "project"!), but I finally got it back to Mike Forrester ("Bluzboy66", here on the HFC), and we worked out how to best attack the wiring/controls. He turned that around quickly, and I picked it up yesterday afternoon, took it home, drilled for the Dunlops and strung it up. I'm sure the whole idea is kind of goofy to some people, but the guitar is amazingly lightweight (weighs less than a lot of single Daytonas I've played), it plays great on both necks, and I'm really digging the whole PhatCats/Korina/hardtail sound - very "Live At Leeds"-ish, if that makes any sense. The stock Daytona Duncans give me all the Strat stuff I need, and the bridge rail sounds like a beefy mini-bucker. The switching between the necks is done by an "On/Off/"On" Fender Mustang slider switch between the two necks, since I didn't want a high-profile toggle added anywhere in the playing area, and that blends in with the guard pretty well. I've had a Gibson 1275 before, and never had any use for an "On/On/On", so liked the kill position idea on this guitar. I also never use the dual tone controls on any Strat/Strat-style guitars I've owned, so Mike wired up a master vol/master tone, and we went with the more logical/familiar Gibson-style toggle as the pickup selector for the top neck, and kept the logical/familiar 5-way blade for the bottom neck. The bladebucker in the bridge was just because I've never met a Strat bridge pickup I could stand. The last thing is the swapping out of the 2lbs of metal from the stock Sperzel tuner buttons for the Pearloid plastic buttons, which I've done on all of my Daytonas/Duotones. A little touch that goes a long way. At any rate, the options are fun - standard tuning on one neck, the other tuned for slide. Drop-D, tuning down 1/2 step, any other crazy open tunings I want to mess with, and .440 on the other neck. Not something everybody will like, I'm sure, but I feel good about "saving" two basketcase Daytonas and putting them together into something really cool and unique. Special thanks to Serial, Zenmindbeginner, HHB, Bluzboy66, and lousy spellers on eBay for their contributions to this masterpiece. Stay tuned for what happens to the $85 USA Daytona project I snagged last fall. Coming soon...

This particular Daytona is twice as much fun as my other one. There's a 3.3 lb Korina body under all that cool flake too!

Just picked this one up today north of Baltimore: Some people know that I'm a sucker for a nice, lightweight Daytona, especially if it has some interesting mods and a sparkle finish... I got this one home, strung/set it up and have been playing it nearly nonstop for hours. It's really cool!

A "Danelectro" headstock? That would be FUGLY!!! Peter does have the best Hamer collection, but I don't think he has that one. They made very few of those - in the late '70s they made a few for artists including Billy Bremner and Dave Edmunds and I'm not sure where those ended up. I think Doc Large has one (??). In the mid-80s, my local Hamer dealer in NC ordered a run of 5 archtop Sunbursts (they were all flat tops at the time) - two with Standard headstocks and three with Dan Armstrong heads. Love those...

If it's any consolation, the Hamer cases are made by TKL. Same case as stock, just without the gold logo.

If any damned cat ever peed in one of my guitar cases, it would definitely become a coffin case.

Some crazy custom Cali Doubleneck...you know, something subtle like that. Actually, I'm pretty good with my current Hamers,and all the cool ones I've been fortunate enough to have owned over the years, but would really dig a Monaco Bass. Until then, I've got a 4 digit "project" waiting in the wings that will fill that bill, if I ever get it finished up.

Ha! I remember playing that one with you guys about 5 years or so ago. Yep. Pretty flat response. Fun to play though.

Some four-digit Standard and Mick Ronson action in this one:

Still better than the Ace Frehley Kindergarden formula of A-B-A-B rhyming for every song...

That's not what I would have picked for an opening single/release. I listened to it last night, and wasn't impressed. It may be a decent song coming from some other band, but I had higher expectations for VH. Sounds like a bunch of noise thrown together with a few lyrics that border on idiotic. I'll still see the show, but hope they put out something better next.

Toadroller - 2012. It's a NEW YEAR! Oddly enough, I have (and have had) many incredible Hamers. I keep grabbing the Daytonas first for some reason, and I've NEVER considered myself a Strat guy.