serial

Holy $hit-just heard your voice mail. Hell yeah!!!

If it'll fit in an LP case, I'll send one down for you in the am. Holy crap that looks freaking fantastic!!!

Ace Frehley, Beyotch! Looks like the Inferno is at NTL completion stage!

Indeed, sir. Actually, I use that all of the time for between songs as a kill switch especially when we're running loud.

Nice! Looking forward to this one bigtime!

Yup. Korina body, rock maple cap. Ooooh, that looks GOOD, Jay!

Looking VERY good! This is one I've had lying around for many years (since the Baker shop stuff was sold off). I got really lucky and scored one of the two Baker Inferno necks for singlecuts pretty reasonably. Regular Infernos are impossible to find as it is (Ishibashi has one for $11k right now) and that inlay is just SO cool. Jay-Len, Doug and I were out last night and of course the topic went to NTL. We were giddy (my SG and Doug's LP sustainer were onstage, of course). And serial's Inferno project is now in wip. single pup / bigsby / pimp daddy yo yo finish will be completed by stike

3+3 Blitz or Vector Mirage (ugh-fugliest in Koa-yuk!) Eclipse Scarab Diablo

Got sumthin' cool in Jay's hands too... Looking forward to that one!

I'm about 1/2 Hamer at the moment out of 36-40 instruments. I have other brands because when I want a Les Paul, it has to be a Gibson. When I want a Tele (or more recently) a Strat, it has to be a Fender. I've only owned a few non-USA guitars: -75 Ibanez Destroyer -78 Ibanez IC-210 (3 coil Iceman) -79 Ibanez Iceman (the only non-USA I still have) -86 Tokai AST-62 -80s Fender Japan blue flower Tele -00's Fender Japan 62 RI Strat

Most SS1s with dots sell for a lot less. That's closer to bound and crowned with a custom finish or LED territory. I hope she gets what she wants for it if she's the one selling, but that's pricey, yes.

Their mail-order stuff was always a kind of "cross your fingers and hope for the best". I scoured through one of their stocklists once (which were also as randomly organized as they were vague) and found a "Hamer Doubleneck". Figuring that the worst I could do was a Cali, I ended up with a rare 81 guitar/bass combo. The guy on the phone couldn't even tell me the configuration!

Kahlers first appeared in 1983. That one's a later install and would've matched the rest of the hardware on an LPC with chrome hardware. Knobs aren't original/should be black speed knobs, but the reflectors look kinda cool on there. Silverbursts, like Antigua Fenders are cool with me!

This. Mine too.

I LOVE the Lollars in my Historic R4 Goldtop. The Gibson pickups were nothing close, even though I find them better than the Duncans that Hamer used.

Just dug up some of my Ibby stuff from back then-there was an AR 3005 in '83 that had the two mini toggles. The 3000/5000s were the ones I was thinking about with all of the knobs and stuff.

Believe it or not, that wasn't the top of the line in the early 80s. These are super nice guitars I think. Most are cherry sunburst and have a "Custom Made" inlay at the 20th fret. I'm sure production was very low on these-I remember the ad with thd tiger over a sick flametop, but I think that guitar was a 4000-they had two mini switches that the 1500 didn't have. The 5000 was the one with vine inlays. The AR 500s were loaded with switches. The 200s, 300s and 500s were production guitars-I think the 1500s were the "custom shop" higher end stuff, but don't quote me-it's been a while! I'll give you tree fiddy right away!!

Could someone post the collection link on this thread if it's not already a sticky? Awesome.

Fixed again.

$40,000 for one with no fingerboard inlays.

I know furniture and NC too (was friends with Hunt Broyhill and worked the furniture market for years in school and lived a few miles outside of High Point.) I've also had the actual 80s Hamer maple veneer sheets in my hands and probably still have some around, so that's where I'm coming from. The rounded edge is a bevelling of the top and there's a bit of illusion going on there. It's my understanding that there are some retops out there that were done (ECMM?), but my guess is you could tell those by looking in the control cavity. Take an unmolested one and look at the top thickness in the pickup routes-that's a thin veneer of maple there!

The tops on the 80s Specials (and Four Digits and Sunbursts) is a THIN veneer. Trust me-I have a sheet of what they used around somewhere (unless I gave it to Platzer for rehabs and Kahler repairs!). It's not much thicker than a Manila folder. I've also had several stripped Specials, Sunbursts and even two four digits pass through my hands over the years. The tops are thin! Look at the pickup cavities of a stripped one (or a trans finished one) and you'll see that there's not much there. Nothing close to what anyone cpuld legitimately call a "maple cap". The veneers were strictly cosmetic. This! For the best demonstration of this-look at a Special with a wear spot by the bridge pickup or where a pickguard would be (finger or pick wearthroughs)-there are a lot of them out there-you're down into mahogany after almost no time.

That would be very surprising. I've never seen an 80s Special with anything but a veneer top unless it was one of the rare (stupid rare) carved tops and that one in the pic looks like every other veneer topped one to me. As mentioned above, the way they edged the top makes it appear much thicker than the veneer actually is.

No maple cap-that's a veneer top (single piece). All Sunbursts and Specials in trans finishes (and many if not most with opaque finishes) had veneer tops. Four digit Standards had a center seam two-piece veneer. That doesn't lessen the guitar in the slightest. Maps caps were only on a half dozen or so carved top Sunbursts. Flat Maple caps were offered in the early 90s on the Special FM.

David B IS rock.