Jeff R

My local Hamer dealer has a NOS Mahogany Studio in the deep heritage cherry looking color. Nice big neck, plays and sounds great. He's had it a while and may be ready to cut a sweet deal on it. PM me if you want his contact information.

Let's do it in Nashville in Gibson's parking lot.

I guess that means we should start organizing a 10-year HFC anniversary party, kind of like an open house event. ** ducking **

Here's web.archive.org's capture of the old guestbook... Old HFC Guestbook Page It has a bunch of entries before the first one with a datemark, and that entry is March 1998. Flashback - one of the old HFC boards

+1. My school's king shit band played "Black Dog" and "Misty Mountain Hop," and very well. My band played "Purple Haze." We sounded more like Jimmy Walker than Jimi Hendrix.

Considering their age, crowd's age, three-piece band and the nature of the show, I'd go with a upbeat and current Green Day song. All of my 15-year old's and my 10-year-old's friends know that stuff and love it, and it's pretty easy to play and sing.

They sound to my ear like a cross between oldskool Sabbath and oldskool Zeppelin. Love the disc and I'd love to see them live.

Okay, alive and back home. I'm not even going to try and do a play-by-play right now, but I'll go off in installments in the near future on one or more of the following subjects: - The mini-HFC gathering/Miller Lite critiquing event in my So Cal hotel room Friday, attended by myself, Mobbie, Frankie II, and the elusive Ed Rechts. - Joining Rechts, local travel guide extraordinaire, for a two-man jaunt across greater Los Angeles all day Saturday and Sunday. The Viper Room photo was just one aspect of this educating, entertaining and enlightening adventure. - A Cajun's observations on So Cal...this will be an essay (aka rant LOL) covering topics such as "Daddy Money," tribute bands, and the medical condition "dis(ney)functional" I noted in and around Anaheim. For now, I just have to give a big HFC thanks to Mobbie and Frank and especially Rechts for an absolutely unforgettable experience. And Ken, your timing for contracting the flu sucked. Next time, bro!

Okay, I'm getting ready to take a pic of this shit at some point tonight... I got home from work and by the back door there's a big, gorgeous flower arrangement in a vase (or a vaaaz, I dunno, not that fucking French) with roses, sunflowers, day lillies, pansies or whatever (like I know my damn flowers) and there's a card stuck in one of those plastic thingies that look like oyster forks sticking out the side ... "To Jeff, With love, the HFC." My side was absolutely hurting with laughter. Not so much this beautiful flower arrangement for our den, but moreso the reaction of my wife. "Why don't you get me nice pretty flowers like that?" LOL Okay, who? My gut reaction is Gale LOL

You guys are the greatest. Thanks for the kind wishes. It's actually my 39th birthday and I get two presents for my birthday this year. Got the first one last night. My 10-year-old future FBI/CIA agent, Matt, is playing little league for the first time this year. Last night was the season opener and they put him on the mound for three innings. He recorded six strikeouts and he also taught a kid a lesson about crowding the plate by pegging the living shit out of him in the back. I was so proud of him! They ended up winning 8-7: Not bad for a team that is a bunch of first-year players that the rest of the league had already written off as a floormat team. Second gift comes Friday... A Cajun's first time in greater Los Angeles with a bunch of great West Coast HFC'ers. When we're on the pier letting me experience my first Pacific Ocean sunset, we'll hoist brews in THE HFC FAMILY'S honor!

No kidding. I have two electrics. Maybe I shoulda bought Brooks' life-sized strat and tele posters a few weeks ago just to make my "gear room" more than an unused corner of the den.

Man, that white JCF old-old school Rhoads is the one I'd lose a nut for. I presume you're YetAnotherOne on Tracy's board too? I'm the same Jeff R that's over there.

Is the band's object to be an entertaining "band" or to showcase/support a hot guitar player? 99 percent of the audience don't know squat about hot guitar players. Guit players are either "good" or "suck," and if you hit the changes and play solos that aren't total suckage, you're "good." My uneducated guess is the average attendance/head count at a Green Day show exceeds the typical G3 event, but that's just a guess.

"Green Stripe" means the final evolution of the Mark III... http://homepage.mac.com/mesaboogie/dot.html

Scott, I'm running my EV-loaded combo with Cajun Boy's Celestion-loaded Thiele underneath, and it's got the low and punch of a halfstack with more than enough gigging volume, with half the footprint.

Great amp. I'm loving my green stripe combo I got from gwayne a few months ago. Heavy as a car but incredible tones.

I had a cheapo super-strat back in the early 90s that I let my then-only son fingerpaint. Stripped down the clearcoat to leave the base color (it was white) and let Joey go to town on it - handprints, smudges, pours, you name it, in vivid green, pink and blue, then I shot it with cheap rattlecan clear. It came out interesting to say the least - it was actually hideous looking hahaha.

This sounds like a question for Eric Johnson. EJ: "If all else fails, get the pickup rings you want and be sure to face magnetic north. Then, cock the pedalboard 14 degrees starboard and you should be fine. But be conscious of your pick...If you have a heavy right hand, go another 2 degrees starboard with the pedalboard. Take the battery out of the chorus, run a wall-wart and boost the depth. Put a Kraft caramel underneath the toe end of the wah to limit the sweep trebly. Then, with your right hand, tilt the pick so you attack wound strings with a 45 degree angle, unwound with a 48 degree angle. Of course, that's if you are using 10s. PM me for my string gauge, alloy mix and number of winds on the keys and how much burger juice in CCs I use on my signature picks to make them a little more easier to grip. Of course, all this is relative..." Jeff R.: Get the rings you want visually. They don't make a shitload of difference tonally. And the look is worth 10 times more.

Hello everyone, I'm new here but I need some advice about this Hamer Slammer Series Studio Archtop GoldTop that I have. Many of the folks who are you giving you advice you asked for know as much (probably more) than Hamer in regard to product history and current used market values. If you really think you guitar is worth much more than the numbers the experts are quoting, put it on the market and see how the market reacts. If you do sell it for what you think it's worth, good for you, but you may want to prepare yourself for cricket sounds in your inbox based on the opinions above. I share their opinions BTW. While I'm not an expert on the imports and I can appreciate their bang-for-the-buck factor, I can't see one going for more than $300 on the used market. That's top dollar for a shit-ass clean piece from someone who hasn't thoroughly researched the market or shopped around. No one's offered to buy the guitar from you for the $150 or $200 or whatever. That kind of indicates to me at least that no one here is trying to deceive or lie to you in order to cheat you out of your guitar, huh?

Van Halen I. The guitar tone on "Runnin' With The Devil" made me say "whoa", then "Eruption" came on and completely knocked me on my ass.

I'll echoplex the choir here. Different sound and feel. Me and Cajun Boy did an A/B with his tricked out Studio Custom last week and an '81 LP Standard I'm babysitting for a military buddy who's overseas. Ran them through his Bogner halfstack and then his SF Super Reverb and some stompboxes. The SC was more comfortable to play on your body and more articulate (light tone woods and ebony board surely helped this I'm sure). The '81 Standard had a boomier bass tone. The two factors I'd first point to at are the thicker body and then (just my opinion) the extra mass (wood) on the bass side of the neck from the 16th fret up. Was either one better? Not necessarily. Get what makes you happy for your ears, fingers, eyes and back (this is a LP-related thread after all). FYI, I've owned two '72 Customs, a '79 Standard, an '82 30th Anniversary Standard, and an '84 Custom and played countless others (all my buddies were LP players in the 90s) and all LPs are different tonally in some regard in my opinion. Maybe because their weights are all over the board - the '82 30th was a featherweight and the '79 Standard clocked in the whopping 13-14 pound range. The Studio Customs I've owned (one) and played (several) were much more consistent overall. I'd take the LP for its tones (especially for rock), typically stoopid low action and "the look." I'd take an SC for playing comfort, tonal versatility and bang-for-the-buck factor.

Brent Mason has an incredible instructional distributed by Hot Licks. I've watched about 3/4ths of it twice - I can't make it to the end without running into my backyard, dropping to my knees and pitching my fists into the air while screaming "I SUCK!" towards the heavens.

EVH has said in interviews that the pickup in his Frankenstrat was pulled out of a 50s ES-335. Seymour approached EVH a loooong time ago about a signature pickup. He got to examine and measure the Frankenstrat pickup and found that the windings on the two coils were off caliber, apparently evidence of the handwinding at Gibson back in the day. An EVH endorsement deal didn't materialize, but Seymour put a dupe out of Ed's botched PAF anyway - it materialized as the Duncan Custom. Seymour now offers a custom shop EVH pickup called the "Evenly Valued Harmonics" or something like that (can't remember exactly what the "V" stands for). I haven't tried one out so I can't compare it to the Duncan Custom, but it's like $175 or around there and handwound by Seymour. I have some friends who swear by that pickup, but they are booteek corksniffers so take that for what it's worth. I used a Duncan Custom in my main Strat in the 80s (routed the guitar to take it). Nice pickup, a hot and bright PAF and potted. I didn't have or have access to a Plexi at that time, but I'd bet it would have sounded bitchin' through one. Edited to add: I'm a believer in naturally aged PAFs. I love stock pickups in 70s and (now) 80s LPs.

Happy happy joy joy ...

It won't be free for the big-boy corporate sponsors. When Sharon's pitching the proposal to potential sponsors, she will market the tour as stops in the biggest consumer markets in the U.S., at the biggest venues in those markets. Because of the free admission, every show will be sold-out and standing room only. Nothing like getting a captive audience at an all day event to further brand your company. And because your company is being associated with something as "cool" as OzzFest in the audience's eyes, your shoeing yourself into a seal of approval with those consumers.