JohnnyB

Packing peanuts are very handy for packing, a real bitch for unpacking and cleanup. But I'll take a styro peanut mess over shipping damage any day.

I can't for the life of me understand: 1) Why Crate discontinued it and 2) Why every amp maker out there isn't making one and marketing it as the ultimate ass-saver. Inexpensive, 4-1/2 lbs., powerful, compact, what's not to like? Class D technology continues to improve every year. Even in high end audio, several of the chi-chi boutique makers have class D offerings, and some have switched entirely to Class D or nearly so. The most recent iterations are sometimes compared to tube amps for their transparent midrange and smooth treble. After MCChris's post, there must be at least a dozen "me too" and "+1" posts for the Crate Power Block. It had really cool styling too.

Avanti. Just to keep it 'merican based. *If* Avanti could have survived and evolved past their early days. Eh, who am i kidding. I got nothin'... Dude, an Avanti reference. You don't get that every day. For those of you who don't know, google it. Very cool. I'm old enough to remember when the Avanti came out, and me being a sucker for the underdog, it quickly became my favorite car. Andy Granatelli set 34 land speed records in a supercharged 400 hp Avanti made available to the public. The R3 did the flying mile at Bonneville at 168.15 mph in 1962. For a good writeup, see this. The engine compartment was so tight that you couldn't order both the supercharger option and air conditioning. The Avanti was so captivating that even though Studebaker shut down in the mid-'60s, a couple of Studebaker dealers bought the rights to Avanti as well as some Studebaker manufacturing facilities to form the Avanti Motor Corporation which became a relatively large scale custom order operation. More info is available here. According to the Wikipedia article, some form of the Avanti II was made until 2007.

Fender has had various forays into premium set neck guitars going back 20 years or more. They offered a line of D'Aquisto-designed arch tops in the '90s until around the time Jimmy died. As owners of Guild, they also built the standard line of Benedetto arch tops for awhile. I think the fact that they abandoned these ventures in the '90s is fair indication that Fender was finding that the public has trouble warming up to setneck Fenders and that their setneck-making resources were better spent elsewhere, such as making Guilds. As for these new limited editions you linked to, it's the first time Fender has come off as being more desperate than creative. It's fruitless to take it personally if they ditch Hamer but come up with their own premium line. In their minds--and experience--the two have little or nothing to do with each other.

Point taken, but I'd liken Hamer more to the Packard or the Pierce Arrow for first-rate materials, meticulous build quality and attention to detail.

Hamer had a 38-year run, better than many higher profile brands. We've gone over Hamer's marketing and manufacturing choices over the past three decades that may have contributed to their vulnerable position, ad infinitum. How long are we going to vilify Fender for not making Hamer USA their chronic charity case? Maybe Fender's and Gibson's current attempts at finding marketing angles and market niches is a symptom of the shrinking percentage of guitar-based rock in the world of pop music, in which case Hamer USA would be a low priority. It's not like Hamer could lift Fender above the fray.

A Dumble Overdrive is soooo 1996.

You're aiming way too low for an $85K amp. $10K would be more appropriate.

Yeah, because these are hanging in stores and man caves everywhere.

Yeah but there is always a WHY behind the current situation and that's what we're discussing. WHY is PRS dominant, how did they get that way. If the marketing is great, you can sell ice to eskimos. Where I think you have it wrong in your proposition is the implied 'comparison.' I'd say 99% of PRS users never compared a PRS to a Hamer before they bought. They just saw the PRS in the hands of an artist they connect with, tried out a few models and bought. Though I would agree that Hamer's self-limitations hurt them in the long run - when Kim told us that Hamer's color varatiions were limited due to the inventory software they used, I threw up my hands. I never said anything of the kind. Prospective PRS and Hamer buyers in the '80s-on would have been comparing them to Fenders and Gibsons primarily, and Ibanez and Yamaha to some extent. When you compare a PRS to an SG or LP, the PRS balances better, is contoured, has a smaller, more efficient headstock, locking tuners, and a highly functioning vibrato that keeps its tune while delivering a competitively big, fat tone. When you compare the PRS to a Fender, it has a the fatter tone and tonal balance of a mahogany-based set neck, a better vibrato tail, a distinctive yet compact headstock, and stunning looks in any color you want. The basic PRS design is a halfway morph between a Strat and an LP: 25" scale, ergonomically designed, with 3+3 but with straight string pull, and a compact, effective vibrato tail. Whether you were a Gibson guy or a Fender guy, PRS offered a guitar with the features you wanted to have without giving up the ones you already liked. Without changing jigs but just substituting woods, PRS could make their basic shape sound more Stratish by substituting maple for the neck and ash for the body (which they did). They also offered a Fralin-sourced noiseless 3-P90 model to get even strattier with the same wood cuts other than the pickup routs. Strap on a Hamer Sunburst/Archtop/Studio, and compared to the Gibson it is made better and probably sounds better (in some cases by a lot), but doesn't distinguish itself with ergonomics, headstock, pickup designs (mostly off-the-shelf DiMarzio and later Duncans), or tuners. If you look at PRS vs. Hamer from different angles--design, manufacture, endorsements, marketing--it's not much mystery why PRS is the one still standing and still independently owned. That doesn't mean it's a better guitar, but it does mean they had a more viable business model.

Has it ever occurred to anybody on this thread that maybe a lot more people simply like the PRS guitars better? For starters, they weren't particularly derivative of any earlier shape, whereas the Sunburst has the basic geometry of a Gibson double cutaway LP Special. They offered a 3+3 direct pull headstock, bringing identifying features of Gibson and Fender together. Hamers based on that shape don't balance particularly well and are prone to neck dive. The PRS shape, OTOH, has an extended upper horn, placing the strap button at about the 12th fret for very comfortable balance. Maybe PRS had a better business model as well. For a long time they offered only ONE main set neck shape, one boltneck shape, and the Hamer-like Santana model. Scrape binding is available on the body only, no bound necks or headstocks. Inlays are limited to dots or birdies and you pay dearly for the birdies. However, you could get it in just about any color or burst imaginable, with plain, flame, or quilted maple tops, with or without the double stain. For all the sweat generated over bindings and inlays, PRS proved you didn't have to sweat over binding at all. They flew out the door on the wings of those bird inlays. Meanwhile, Hamer offered several guitars based on a not-very-ergonomic shape, with or without binding, dots, crowns, or victory inlays, almost always with a seriously good maple top, refused to do double staining, and was available in only 2 or 3 standard colors. You could get any color as long as it wasn't double-stained, but at a serious upcharge. Maybe a broad color selection trumps binding and custom features. It has certainly worked for PRS.

Yeah, wasn't he an astronaut or something?

Well, that's where they they attracted me--offering simple guitars without bling or binding, but with top quality materials (e.g., 1-piece Honduras mahog bod, 3-piece neck, multi-coat hand-rubbed finish, etc.). The P-90 Special was a good deal at $1500 list, but when they offered the Anniversary/Artist Mahogany at the same price, that was a monster deal, getting a semihollow carved archtop for the same price. I played one back-to-back with a new SG at about $1K more and it was a cruel joke. I bought the Anniversary on the spot and still have it. The Anniversary didn't have the crowns and bound fretboard, but it had what mattered--1st-rate materials, build quality, and just massive tone. I know that's a niche market, but I sure liked that niche.

It has not been revealed, not here at least, that they have released a statment regarding one way or the other. That is why I, as I wrote in an earlier post in this thread, think that we should send them a collective letter signed by the HFC members asking they up front what is going on. If it is signed by all the members here they have to answer us. Hard to ignore a question sent by a couple of hundred members, right? English is not my native language. (Although I worked for a major American company for over 13 years and corresponded weekly with the LA and NY office). But I'd prefer if someone who is good at writing up something formal would write it, other than me. Who would be up for it? The day Greg posted the news (and a few days after IIRC), I went looking on the Fender web site and in the business press (Hoovers, etc.) and found nothing. Since Fender never became publicly traded, they are under no real obligation to announce anything (no more so than Greenfield Hardware was required to let us know they'd stopped carrying hand made brooms). Whoa... Wait... When the fuck did Greenfield Hardware stop selling hand made brooms?!?!?! Now I am pissed!

I agree about all the comments about Santana's repetitiveness and lackluster output for the last couple of decades. But when it comes to explaining endorsements and name brand recognition, what we think of Santana doesn't matter. What matters is results. Irrelevant after 45? His Supernatural album (1999, age 52) alone sold 15 million copies. That's 3/4 of Cheap Trick's entire sales output of 37 years. Santana has sold 100 million records. From a visibility and name recognition standpoint, they're not even in the same league, personal evaluations and preferences notwithstanding. When it comes to notoriety among lead guitarists, Santana is an A-lister alongside Page, Clapton, Slash and a very few others. Who among them endorses any guitar brands other than Gibson, Fender, and Martin? Only Santana broke rank, and the continuing independent existence of PRS and Mesa are the result. Aficionados may prefer Nielsen as a better guitarist with more imagination, but so is Lyle Workman and other largely unknown Hamer endorsers whose lack of iconic status will not boost sales figures the way Santana did for PRS and Mesa.

Yeah, that was my point using Santana as an example. Getting the guitar into artists' hands, getting them seen together onstage, in ads, in interviews, etc. Brand credibility. It doesn't really matter how old, tired, overused, compressed, collaborated, or irrelevant Santana is now. His endorsements almost single-handedly launched both PRS and Mesa/Boogie in the '80s when they needed it. He was a rock guitar god, and one of the few to break ranks with Gibson, Fender, and Marshall. Well before Santana became a historical relic, PRS and Mesa were solidly established and able to attract plenty of endorsers. Did Hamer ever have an endorser of the stature of Santana at his peak?

This joint is used to produce an angled headstock from thinner or shorter stock. Even rough work on a headstock or neck prior to the joint being glued up feels backwards from a production standpoint. Ah yeah. That would make a significant cost difference, especially for bigger operations. But given how identical so many Asian archtops are with various brand names and headstock shapes, I suspect they're getting a double benefit here. I've played Epiphone, Samick, and Abilene ES-175 copies back-to-back-to-back, and they're pretty much indistinguishable. And $500 instead of $2500.

Definitely. The biggest factor in Asian manufacture is high-precision large scale automation of manufacturing processes and bigger economy of scale. Example: I used to moonlight selling pianos. If you make a piano rim by the Steinway method, it takes at least a week glueing up a grand piano rim, and at least 6 months for it to cure as they still use sawhorses, brushes, and hot animal glue. When Samick makes a grand piano, the wood goes into a huge power press that produces a rim in ... 90 seconds! I talked to the local Samick rep back then (1992) and he said Samick was the biggest user of Sitka spruce, and that it was brought over from Alaska by boats the size of super tankers, but filled with stacks of spruce. Also, if you examine Asian guitars with a variety of brand names on them--Abilene, Samick, Epiphone, etc., you'll see that diagonal scarf joint where the headstock meets the neck. They are no doubt making thousands of guitars for dozens of brand names and then attaching the appropriate headstock (and maybe tailpiece) for a given brand name. That's how they can make credible ES-335, Casino, and ES-175 copies for a small fraction of the Gibson price, even when factoring out the difference in hardware and pickups. Bringing a few of the line workers over to New Hartford wouldn't be much help.

The hi-fi analogy works for me. Look how SACD has made no impact whatsoever. Most people want cheap and convenient - then throw it away when it goes wrong. Clever marketing can make a 'name' desirable even if it is just the same crap as everything else. Brave New World? Quality stereo found a mainstream market in the '70s because there were few other ways to spend your home entertainment money. Most TV was on-air with a choice of 3-5 channels. Affordable VCRs were still 10 years away. Home computers were right around the corner, but getting connected on the WWW was still a long way off. There were no smart phones, no tablets, no Facebook, no Twitter. Home stereo was the only form of self-determined home entertainment at the time--the only one where you picked the titles and played them back in any order and frequency that you wanted. And playback equipment was available in a wider range of quality than for any other format. At a time when you could get McIntosh separates and JBL, Ohm, Dahlquist, or ESS speakers, Revox, Tandberg, Sony, or Teac tape decks, Micro-Seiki turntables and Fidelity Research moving coil cartridges, the top level TV was still a 25" RCA color TV, which didn't look nearly as real as state-of-the-art hi-fi could sound. There has always been a conflict between price/convenience on one hand and quality on the other. Sometimes you get a perfect storm such as the LP, which was dramatically better sounding than the 78 AND far more convenient--less fragile, lighter weight, and held four times as much music per record. Sometimes, such as the SACD, there is no improvement in convenience and little noticeable improvement in sound. CD had advantages over LP--low noise, better sound in some ways especially on mid-level equipment and below, and a big jump in convenience--smaller form factor, more rugged, and 77 minutes of uninterrupted music (vs. about 20 for the LP). The non-impact of SACD in the marketplace doesn't so much reflect a disdain for quality as it does the other factors: it didn't sound that much better than CD, and even then it took a pretty high-res system to tell the difference. It was as convenient as CD, but not more convenient. Like Hamer, it was incrementally better, a bit more expensive, and a lot harder to find. People like quality, but only a few are willing to make lifestyle changes or go to great lengths to get it when something convenient will more or less do the job. Once places like GC and MF dropped Hamer USA in the late '90s, it became a struggle to find them and it didn't help that you couldn't point to a current mainstream artist who used them. Cheap Trick? C'mon. Downloadable mp3s are the height of convenience, but the quality is far enough down that significant numbers of customers are seeking something better, which accounts for the resurgence of the LP. Right now, high-res music specialist Acoustic Sounds offers 2,081 titles on SACD, but 27,461 titles on vinyl, about evenly split between new issues and used LPs. It has emerged as the high-res format of choice. And now there is a surge in demand for quality for downloads. There are several sources for high-res downloads such as HDTracks, offering download resolutions ranging from 16/44.1 (CD quality) to 24/192 Khz (state-of-the-art digital master) resolutions. I have a few 24/88.2 and 24/96 downloaded recordings that cost $14-20 each. Of course it'll never take over the market, but it's a better business model for high-res digital than SACD or DVD-A. No pressing plant, no warehouses, no inventory building. Just FLACs of master recordings waiting to be downloaded.

Grunge peaked -'nuff said. I moved to Seattle at grunge's peak in Aug. 1993. I saw at least three things in Seattle that helped kill the grunge movement (aside from the fact that the market was starting to move on): 1) The city passed an ordinance banning the posting of concert bills on utility poles. When I moved here every utility pole was totally pasted and stapled with posters for grunge acts at clubs throughout Seattle. This killed the most common and nearly cost-free form of publicity. 2) Seattle revoked the license for clubs to accept under-age patrons in drinking establishments. This had helped fuel the grunge movement here, as many sub-21-yr-olds frequented these clubs and create the buzz for the bands. The new law limited the clubs to 21-and-over, shutting out the greater part of the grunge audience. 3) Kurt Cobain committed suicide in April 1994. It was almost like what Jim Morrison's death did to the Doors. Sure, there were still Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and all those other Seattle grunge bands, and the remainder of Nirvana morphed into the Foo Fighters, but it took the wind out of the grunge movement's sails, especially when combined with the new liquor laws. There was no place for them to go, no cause to take up, no new Nirvana CDs to buy. Suddenly grunge became a downer and we saw pop music move on to hip-hop and electronic-driven dance music and diva pop. Not much guitar action there, and that's been true now for 19 years.

Oh, like the way they've destroyed Guild, Gretsch ,Gretsch Drums, Latin Percussion, Sabian Cymbals, Takamine, Gibralter hadware, Ovation, and Adamas? With all the brands FMIC has acquired and protected, and the different business models they tried to make Hamer USA viable, I have to conclude that there was insufficient market demand to keep Hamer USA open. They gave them five years, folks. These assertions that FMIC bought Hamer (they didn't "buy Hamer," they bought Kaman Music Corporation) and shut it down to eliminate the competition is patently ridiculous. If that were the case, why didn't they shut down Gretsch, Guild, Takamine, Ovation, and Adamas? Those brands are far more competitive with Fender than Hamer USA ever was or could have been.

Well, yeah, but at least it's better here. You can bask in the joy that such trust exists in little pockets around the world, and even on the Internet.

I love good mini-buckers. They are the perfect prescription for someone torn between the clarity and midrange of P-90s vs. the low noise and fatter sound of full-sized buckers. Mini-buckers give you a nice blend of both, and I don't see why they don't show up in more guitars, especially when you look at what Johnny Winter and Gatemouth Brown didi with them. I had a couple of Eclipses (a 6 and a 12), and I currently have a Gretsch jazz box with a floating NOS Johnny Smith New York mini-bucker (adjustable polepieces). Congratulations on your acquisition. You're going to have a lot of fun with it.

It's not potentially shady, it IS shady with clear intent to defraud and steal your shit. If you google, you'll find examples of fraudulent letters all over the Internet that follow this same pattern--out of town on business, don't have time, give me lots of contact information including location, I'll send somebody by to pick it up. You can bet that his "agent" or gang or whatever would show up long before the check cleared. Pretend you never saw this. If the guy were sincere, wouldn't he ask for some more detailed pictures to make sure it's worth the asking price, send you a cashier's check, and identify and describe the person coming to pick it up? There are lots of websites that enumerate and explain symptoms of scams. The first is vagueness. Notice that your respondent didn't even mention the item for sale, a drum set. He refers to them as "it." Second, he doesn't provide his contact information but wants yours.Third, he offers more than the asking price. It is a variation on the Nigerian scam.

Right. There's a reason he calls it a residency--it's an extended engagement, not a tour. Speaking of his largesse, I don't know his policy these days, but in the '80s he'd buy up rows and rows of front center concert seats and give'em away to underprivileged kids. Yet he was taking heat for not wanting to be in the "We Are The World" video. For all his flamboyance, he doesn't wear his generosity on his sleeve. Speaking of talent, who else has been on the covers of Guitar Player, Bass Player, and Keyboard Player simultaneously? Oh, and I hear that he writes some songs too.