tomteriffic

Pre-ordered quite a while ago. Please include me in the autograph/numbered/sharkfin pick thing too?

Good find! Congrats! Was the guitar originally made for humbuckers? The majority of those from that era were P-90's

Happy Birthday ye great poof!

Newport 90. Tobacco Sunburst, bound front and back, Pigtail bridge, Monaco control layout. Bound headstock and blank ebony fingerboard. Junior. Korina Standard with white PG.

Once I got started, they came pretty fast and furious. At one point within the first year I had five Specials from various eras and two goldtops. But this was my first Hamer, a '94 Special FM, bought new. I still have it and it still sees regular use. After being around to see some of the very first ones, I spent the next 19 years waiting for me, the guitar and the money to all be together at the same place and time.

I bought 5 new ones, including a custom order and a "might as well have been a custom order". Hyped them to anybody who asked. Did my part.

Look at the link further down the thread. And if the seller won't ship, I can help since Somerville isn't too far from me. I may take you up on that. PM sent.

Greg was thinking Baker, GMP and Robin...;P Earlier this evening he was feeling a bit like the Angel of Death. Every time he gets behind a brand big time, it dies. I'd just like to give a shout to all of the dealers who have worked so hard to promote the brand and who have taken a personal interest in getting these fine instruments into our hands over the years. It's a slug in the gut for me, so I can hardly imagine what it's like for them.

Well...... Shit. On the bright side, since they aren't making them any more, I guess that ups the standard HFC offer to $375? Shit.

Yowzers! Coolness on a stick!

My back up is on the pedalboard as well. It's a Tech 21 Character Series Blonde. it takes a minute or two to re-patch some stuff and twiddle some knobs, but turn on the speaker emulator and there you are. I even skip the amp entirely for some small shows/stages.

Yup, and Roy is great people and, I believe, is still a member here.

I played that one for a minute a few years ago. It was very painful to give it back too.

O M F G Said the guy whose first Hamer was a Special FM. Amazing top!

I've got it's first cousin, plaque psoriasis all over my picking hand. It's a beyotch. Sometimes I can't fingerpick due to the pain, sometimes I can't hold onto a pick due to the callus or whatever the extra thick skin is. Too slippery. And it never really goes away. I use a topical steroid cream that helps, but you have to be real careful not to overdo it, our you'll aggravate the cracking and such. I'm told that a *little* extra Vitamin D can help. Haven't seemn much difference myself, though. One thing that ain't going to make it go away, but sure helps it be more tolerable is Gold Dond Ultimate Healing hand cream. For me, this is the absolute shiznit.. Anything else just seems to put a glaze over things and actually makes it worse with regard to holding onto a pick, healing the cracks etc. But wait! There's more!! Since both of these conditions are of an auto-immune nature, there's a good chance that it will throw in, absolutely free, a case of rheumatoid arthritis! Strikes anywhere, any time without warning. Just wait until you hop in the car to go to gramma's house, just fine, and two hours later are unable to walk! It's just coolness on a stick! I feel your pain, literally. Seriously, try the Gold Bond for the cracking and flare-ups.

I almost forgot. If you're playing under a ceiling fan, there may be nothing at all wrong. The air pressure compression/rarefaction caused by the air movement can cause the pitch to vary as it reaches your ears. The bass wouldn't actually warble, your ears would just hear it that way. I once bought a nice Martin as "damaged" because the store owner had been checking it out while under a ceiling fan. Had the same warble problem. There was nothing at all wrong with the guitar.

I'd start by putting some sort of clamp with some mass to it on the headstock. Here's why: A bass, particularly the neck, it like a huge wood chime. It has it's own set of resonances which can act to reinforce or cancel out certain frequencies/notes. Since the frequencies involved are so low, any intermodulation between the string/bass resonances can easily be heard as dead notes, "wildcat" notes, warbles, etc. On a guitar they aren't as noticeable since the frequencies are much higher and are often perceived as just part of the tone of the instrument. What you're describing sounds like the neck and strings have a resonance that are very close to each other. That would account for the warble since the two would be periodically reinforcing and cancelling each other. By putting a clamp or something massive on the headstock, it changes the resonance of the neck or dampens it and should reduce the resonance to where it doesn't interfere with those notes any more. Groove Tubes used to make a fitted brass plate for the back of bass headstocks for just this purpose. It's cheap and worth a try, anyway.

See???? Glad it all went smoothly. Enjoy!

To me, the P-bass pickup is the heart of the tone, but sometimes I like to roll a little J-Bass bridge in there just for a bit more attack or to fill up a bit more space in a sparse arrangement. When recording, it's almost always straight P-Bass though. My Pilot fretless has a trans black finish over a maple body and an ebony board and the P/J configuration. With ground rounds it gets a marvelous fretless "bwaaah" growl and it's possible to slide harmonics on it, even. Again, the sound is mostly the P pickup. And since it's fretless, nobody tries to borrow it.

I'm asking for a friend who is looking around for one. He's looking for an amp modeler, the FX would probably be secondary. What's the most credible one out there? Let's break it into two categoires: Best with price not being an issue and, Moderate/mid-range price and therefore, best bang for the buck. I haven't had one in in years so I have no perspective on one. Fire away. Thanks!

Congrats, Brian! I'm very happy to see you come out on the good end of what I'm sure was a tough time.

This would be right at home in some corners of the deep south. A roots/americana/whateverthehell musician I like a lot is also a primitivist painter. His name is Paul Thorn, the second best thing to ever come out of Tupelo, Mississippi. If his lead guitarist wasn't a lefty, I'd give it to him. As it is, Paul would probably dig the hell out of it. Here's Paul's latest album cover (self-painted). P.S. to add, the guitar ain't my cuppa hemlock, but, eye of the beholder and all that.

I did an MIK Daytona like that for a friend, but I cobbled the circuit together on the existing pickguard. The pre-wired set I had dropped right into a MIM Strat, if that's any help.

Schlabotnicks are the ultimate P-90's, particularly the Engine #42's. Everything else is just "pretty good".

The Gilmour set starts with a set of EMG SA pickups. They have a lot of advantages. Among them are: High output, in the range of a mid-output humbucker. Dead quiet. Great cleans. Low output impedance so they can drive a whole chain of pedals (more on this in a sec). And, to me the biggie is that there is no way that you're going to kiss a mike while playing and have that thing kiss you back and fry you. The Gilmour set brings a couple of extra circuits to the party. First is the fairly well-known EMG SPC or "Strat Presence Control" it's also commonly known as the Fat control. It shifts the resonant center of the pickups downward from the single-coil area to the humbucking part of the frequency range. Fattens the mids, softens up the top a little. If you're playing with an amp that is just on the edge of breakup, this knobbie will push it over. The name of the second circuit escapes me at the moment, but I think it's EXG or EXP. What it does is, as you advance the control, the mids get pushed back a bit and the bottom and top get lifted. It's definitely noticeable but not gonzo over the top. A practical application of this is taking a good strat sound, winding up the EXG knob and you're suddently venturing into that huge SRV wall of amps territory. I cobbled this exact circuit together about 30 years ago, just out of the EMG parts catalog and well before EMG marketed it as a set of any sort. I wanted 1) a guitar that could cover almost all the bases in the band I was in: 2) An output level that was closer to my humbuckered guitar(s) so I wouldn't have to dink with the amp every time I changed guitars 3) something to get away from all the neon and refrigerator compressor buzz in the lines and 4) A ground isolation so I wouldn't get killed by the crappy power in the joints we were playing at the time. It woked well, still sounds great in the guitar I put it in. But that guitar is 30 years old and getting worn out. So I dropped one of the new pre-fab sets into a Strat and it goes to a lot fo gigs with me. My only gripe is that the pots used to be a lot stiffer and the new ones spin a bit too easily for my liking, thus leading to the "pinky knocking the volume down" syndrome. Oh, about the high output, low impedance. That's just the ticket for driving a crapload of effects and, the last time I looked, Gilmour was the poster child for such a setup.