soli'd

A buddy of mine bought a very similar one a while back (same year)- his first Hamer, knowing nothing of the brand, but trusting my recommendation. Same price, and now his favorite guitar.

Man I love it. As beautiful and unique as the guitar is in its own right, the fact that your son designed the expertly stylized inlays brings heirloom status to the instrument. You must be busting with pride. Many congratulations to everyone involved. You da man, Mike.

I've been trying to convince the guys in my band that we should call ourselves The Fathers of Convention... I don't think anyone gets it.

No affiliation- I'm a sucker for natural and this one has a beautiful top. https://reverb.com/item/31769536-hamer-usa-artist-custom-2001-natural

I didn't see the price on this before Ben picked it up- what's considered a ridiculous deal on these?

Nice review, Ernie. Point #9 is huge to me (recording full amp tone direct without mics) if the mic & cab simulation is on point. Do you know whether there are combinations of mics possible, i.e. my beloved combo of a MD421 and a SM-57, or 421/AKG 414?

Hey Jamie- got any power amps or integrated receivers?

Who's got some news?

caught a few of those Frogwings shows myself. Lot of talent on that stage! I'm really glad to see someone else know who Count Mbutu is as well! Edited to add, I also saw a couple of shows from the first JID tour, Billy Cobham on the drums- wow. stopped following them after a couple albums; will put on Laughing Water right now. Huge Jimmy Herring fan going way back to the early days of ARU. They used to play shows at the Georgia Theatre in Athens to 50 people or so; I had never seen anything like them and I was hooked instantly. That was also my first introduction to Jeff Sipe (shown in that vid that specialk posted earlier), maybe my favorite drummer.

I was just looking over my daughter's xmas letter to Santa. She added in a couple items for her mom, then wrote, "And a Shishkov guitar for Dad, the one he's been wanting, so he doesn't have to sell his Hamer to pay for it." Happy holidays, y'all

I saw several of those shows. I LOVED watching Jack play with them. The most memorable perhaps was July 4, 1997, they played outdoors at the equestrian center that was constructed for the Atlanta Olympics the year prior. It was at least 96 degress at 10pm, but the show was next level. That was also the first tour they had Oteil on Bass, both Warren and Woody had departed to pursue the Mule.

Have wanted to play a Vigier since discovering Shawn Lane 20 yrs ago. Never held one. Local Dibs! 😁

My other (main) amp is a custom Fargen 2-ch 4x6V6 monster. It happens to be a great pedal platform, but it stands on its own, really doesn't need pedals at all. He does great mods with fender-based circuits as well. Can't recommend highly enough.

No, in fact if that's what I implied I misspoke. I am VERY pleased with the amp, especially considering the price. The amount of work that goes into them far exceeds the cost, and they're built to order in 6-8 wks. Look at these guts! I've been using it as a pedal platform for a couple years now with no reason to switch. It works very well in that role, namely for the reasons i mentioned earlier. Just playing it on its own it may come across as a bit tight or kinda plain vanilla, but those attributes also make it a good pedal platform.

Things I have found useful in an amp used as a pedal platform: Good headroom, but not too much- it's good for the amp to be able to break up eventually, and it should be pleasing distortion however much there is. A lot of overdrive, distortion and fuzz pedals sound their best when they're able to push the amp into singing a bit on its own. For this reason, tube amps have given me the best results. Controllable mids. If you run a scooped sounding pedal into an amp that is scooped by nature, it's harder work to make either sound its best. Similarly, a mid-focused overdrive, such as many Dumble style drives running into fat sounding amp can get bloated pretty quickly. Being able to adjust the amp eq to best pair with the character of pedals helps a lot. This especially applies to fuzz. I like blackface base tones, but being able to control the scoop, and I like 25-40W as the sweet spot for headroom and achievable amp breakup at reasonable volumes. The pedal platform I've been using for a while now is this Frenzel deluxe plus 25 which are handwired to order, point to point, and less than $600. I've got it paired with a thiele style Hermida cab that I bought from Bubs, with a scumback M75. Does everything pretty well.