jwhitcomb3

Who said "only"? Hamer's existence is unlikely to be affected by anything I have done or will do. Your analysis can be turned on its head: if Hamer was more successful marketing its instruments, there wouldn't be absurdly low priced used Hamers available. My love for Hamer guitars has little to nothing to do with their marketing strategy. It has everything to do with their attention to detail, their skills as designers and craftsment, and their love of making great guitars. -Jonathan

+1

I wish to thank Hamer for its market missteps and all the bruised egos it has inflicted over the years. It has contributed to Hamer not being a household name, and conseqently, kept their resale prices absurdly low. In fact, if Hamer has refused your custom order, only to subsequently build the same piece for someone else, or if a Hamer employee didn't express his everlasting gratitute for your patronage to your satisfaction, I encourage you to express your displeasure by selling all of your USA Hamers at once! Go buy other brands who make you feel better about yourself. Badmouth Hamer on public forums. Shake your mighty fist in the air and let it be known that guitar makers may disrespect you at their own peril! -Jonathan

"Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren" Very singer-songwriter. "Utopia" (1982). Killer power pop album. I also have a soft spot for "Healing", but it is an acquired taste (heavy on the synths). -Jonathan

Agreed. My mother loves 'em, but I can't get by the thin tone (and yes, I've tried the 1778T). If you can find one, the Takamine Solid Series (F370SS and F470SS) were all solid wood guitars that sound great. The 370 series is a dread, the 470 series is mini jumbo. I had a F470SS-CD (CD means cedar top) and it sounded better than anything else I'd ever found for under $1500 (I got mine for around $500). The solid koa back and sides looked great too! -Jonathan

Jol marched to his own drummer. As a result he was involved with making some beautiful things, and pissed off some folks with seemingly arbitrary and sometimes inconsistent decisions. Isn't that pretty much the definition of an artist? After reading this thread, I can't imagine why he didn't want to hang out in this forum. After all, it's fun to be a punching bag. If he'd just done everything that everybody wanted of him, he would have been much more popular. But I don't buy the most popular guitars. I buy Hamers. However he ran his ship, it worked for me. -Jonathan

I haven't seen them in any shops, just a couple on ebay. A Walnut Goose dreadnaught was going for $1200 US, which I thought was a screaming deal. For the purposes of this thread, I think the likelihood of coming across a Boucher OM for sale in the US to be very small. I hope the world is treating you well!

That's like saying "describe your favorite shoe." Favorite for what? I love my Huss & Dalton 00-SP for fingerstyle, my Lowden 0-32 for open tunings and situations where I need power and volume, and my Gurian S3M for everything else. You flatpicking? Fingerpicking? Hybrid? Playing jazz? rock? bluegrass? Folk? Recording? Playing live? Playing solo or with a group? If with a group, what are the other instruments? FWIW, I own 4 acoustics, and none of 'em is a dreadnaught. Closest I have to an OM is the Gurian, which is a great instrument, but has a very narrow neck, so not wonderful for fingerstyle. On the other hand, it is great for electric players who want a familiar feeling neck. Not easy to find here at all, but when they do come up you can usually get a great deal. Great guitars. -Jonathan

Pop-rock doesn't get any better than that. They sure compressed the snot out of that guitar though! -Jonathan

+1 Also "You Shook Me All Night Long" - AC/DC -Jonathan

My two favorites are "The Big Express" and "Skylarking" White Music and Go2 are a bit herky-jerky, and I never got into Apple Venus and Wasp Star. Anything between Black Sea and Nonesuch works for me. -Jonathan

Korina Eclipse. -Jonathan

Yes. I put them on the Artist Mahogany that I bought from another HFC'er, and thought they were great. When I sold the guitar back to him, he got right back to me to find out what strings were on it. Right now I have them on my Eclipse and Artist Korina. Great strings, and well worth the price. -Jonathan

Last winter I loaned my Newport to a friend. Today it came back and when I opened the case I almost puked. There was dried sweat (God, I hope it was sweat) all over the top, the strings (which were new when I gave it to him) were rusty and coated and gross. Shmutz all over the fingerboard. I wanted to disinfect the thing. An hour of cleaning and restringing later, the guitar is just fine (no scratches, dings or anything), but man, this guy isn't coming near my guitars again! Lesson learned, I suppose... -Jonathan

Groovy, baby! Comes in four flavors! If only I hadn't sold my purple sparkle Danelectro 12 string! -Jonathan

Not shitting, Johnny, just pointing out where fact and fantasy collide. Too many variables. Would you disagree that the densities and characteristics between two pieces of wood are far greater than two identically manufactured pieces of cable? Add in different pickups, wiring, electrical components, and two identically manufactured guitars can vary wildly. If that was the case with two cables of the same model, I think we could agree that this was indicative of a problem in quality control. You aren't comparing apples to apples. Principles of excellence? Then I' guess we'd have to agree on what "excellent" means. Me, I'd like the most transparent sounding cable possible, and as I've mentioned before, that's not what you're getting by spending the extra money. There are plenty of places in the signal chain to add filters. I just don't want that in my cable. I think you missed the points we were both making. Mike was pointing out that the qualities that many prefer in cables is not because they have better specs, but because they have higher capacitance. That's not a factor of quality control, but it does mean that some people prefer these cables because they add coloration, not remove it. If the marketing for these cable trumpeted that they color the sound in a pleasing way, I'd have no problems. But claiming superior audio transparency is misleading. If you don't mind buying into marketing nonsense, fine. -Jonathan

Excellent points. And it leads me to the question: did people exclaiming on how much better brand X cable sounded compare to a new brand Y cable, or to their old, trusty, worn out brand Y cable? -Jonathan

Yes. I had mentioned inductance and edited it out as I didn't want to go overboard on the techy stuff. Phase can be measured, but experience with T1/T3 signals over 75 ohm coaxial cables indicates that it takes a lot more than 10-20 feet of cable for it to become a factor...more like 50 to 100 feet to even be measurable. And phase is going to be mangled so much by any amp's tone circuitry that again, we're talking differences in the noise. -Jonathan

I don't have a pedal board, but I do use a Foxrox TZF Flanger in the loop of my Roadking. I was using Hosa patch cables and when I bought the Mogami Gold patch cables, there was....again...an enormous difference. Remember though, I was going from $2-$3 patch cables, so YMMV. Nonsense. The difference in tone that I hear has absolutely zero to do with my emotions. I am not a rookie or someone who has had no experience with professional level equipment. I may not have the ability of others on this board and I am the first to admit that. One thing I do have though, is a very good ear. I don't give a shit was a friggin lab test will show me. I know the damn thing sounds different, very different, from my other cables. I bought these cables because I perceived them to be more road worthy than the cables I was using and I had just had a cable go bad during a show. I was *not* expecting a tonal difference. What I heard was the equivalent of a blanket being taken off of my amp and I was blown away. I immediately posted my experience and several other members purchased this cable and had the same experience. To dismiss this as "snake oil" is extremely arrogant. Millions of people have been cured by placebos as well. This isn't complicated: if there is a perceivable difference in tone, it would be evident by comparing spectrum outputs and waveform. No difference in waveform means no difference in sound. This isn't magic, folks, it's science. Nothing arrogant about it. We're talking about moving electrons through wires. We're talking about the effect a conduit has on the signal passing through it, which can be measured. The test is simple: hook up a white noise generator and a spectrometer, connected by a cable. Measure the output signal and note the RC characteristics of the cable. Any differences will present themselves. Resistance and capacitance are the major elements of a passive filter (they also happen to be the major elements in your guitar's control cavity). Your cable's resistance and/or capacitance levels will determine the attenuation of specific frequencies. So cables with high RC characteristics will sound different from cables with low RC characteristics. Cheap cables typically have lousy RC specs, as do cables with bad connectors or solder joints. But once you pass a threshold, the differences are negligible. Yes, you'll hear the difference between a poorly made cable with bad connectivity and RC characteristics and a well made cable with good connectivity and RC characteristics. But again, once you past a minimum quality threshold, the differences will be negligible. Changing the value of your guitar's tone control from 10 to 9 will have a vastly greater change in resulting tone than changing from a good $20 cable and a $50 cable. You can swap out pots and caps in your guitar for very little money and affect a much greater tonal change. FWIW, I spent a 20 year career moving electrons from point A to point B (telecommunications engineer, developer for MOTU, technical advisory board comittee co-chair at NAMM). My specialty was copper telecom protocols. I've got degrees in electrical engineering and physics. Does this make me an authority? No. But I'm not talking out of my ass either. The difference between a $20 cable and a $50 cable is marketing and psychology. All the anecdotal evidence in the world means nothing. The truth is in the spectrum. -Jonathan

For sure, you want a cable that is made well, has good connectivity, is durable and passes a floor capacitance and resistance threshold. Past that and I've yet to see lab test results showing any difference in output signal waveforms or frequency response, or any articles that don't describe perceived differences in squishy, emotional language. Once you get past the cheap crap, it doesn't make a difference. -Jonathan

I must be the odd man out, because I've never bought a guitar because of a connection to a celebrity. It just doesn't enter my mind when choosing an instrument! -Jonathan

The trick with going digital is really digging down into the capabilities of your system. Many of these modeling amps or rack units are designed to cover a lot of ground, but may not be satisfying if you are looking for one particular sound. So the first step is to find out what a piece of digital gear does best. If you like Marshall tones, go for a digital rig that gives you a wide palette of them. I've always been a Fender amp guy, so naturally I gravitated to their amps. But the sound of the Cyber-Twin left me cold. The Cyber-Deluxe was a completely different story. Sometimes the difference between a good sound and a great sound can be subtle: re-ordering components on your system (such as whether the tone stack is positioned before or after the preamp). Sometimes the best sounds are at the edges: for instance, the Vox model on my Cyber-Deluxe is clean sounding for 80% of its range, and never breaks up heavily on its own. But if I push some more juice through it with the gain stage of the compressor, it opens up a whole new range of overdriven sounds. Similarly, the "modern" (= Boogie) models are set up for very high gain, but if I minimize the gain stage and boost the volume at a later point in the chain, I can get some great light breakup sounds (albeit with more noise than I'd like). Also, some of the models are useless unless the tone controls are set appropriately. Sometimes that means setting the bass or treble way lower than I'd ever do it in a conventional amp. Even models that I originally thought were useless (why would I want a model of Fender's solid state amps?) have proven fertile ground for some unexpected tones. Next, input trim can be a huge factor. Many of these digital amps have a "sweet spot" that can be pretty narrow, and setting the input trim can bet the difference between an anemic or rich sound. If you only ever run your guitar's volume knob at full throttle, you may be missing some very tasty voices in your digital rig. Finally, you have to adjust your mindset. While it is possible to get sounds that rival the best analog rigs, the path you take to get there may be very different. Throw out what you "know" about analog rigs and spend some time learning what works best with your specific digital rig. For the first year I owned my Cyber-Deluxe, I thought it was a fun toy. Over the years, I've tweaked my settings (and have different banks for each guitar) to the point where I simply love the sounds it creates. It's the result of countless hours of tweaking. But when I go to a gig, I pack my guitar, my amp, and a MIDI foot controller, and I'm set. -Jonathan

I really liked the bridge on my 1996 Parker Fly Deluxe. It held its tune well, let me bend one string without pulling the whole thing out of tune, and was a very comfortable and reliable vibrato. Really the best of a fixed and floating bridge. Too bad the guitar sounded so sterile... -Jonathan

As a law student, I have to go with torts. -Jonathan