kevinbower1959

I guess I should have expected that !! It's gonna be killer, but given the current "Sure - we'll build anything you want" policy, I've decided to push out the boat with a few unexpected one-off surprises which I don't want to spoil. Let me just say that a trans black flame top, extensive multi-ply binding, a reverse headstock and a house remortgage are all involved...................

The most epic of all will be the 'Most-Metal-Standard-In-The-History-Of-Hamer' which I'm going to custom order as soon as Frank U gets back to me with a price......

Thanks guys, that's appreciated On a more official note; Sweden Rock Magazine '2011 Album Of The Year' Rock Hard Magazine (Germany) '2011 Album Of The Year' Metal Hammer (UK) #6 in their 'Best Of 2011' And a few more to be announced.....\m/

That is something we consciously avoided, buth during recording and playing live - and you're 100% right - the gits are there for the mids. One of the main reasons why so much modern metal IMHO sounds the way it does is that young players are still dialling up a smiley on their amps. They then drop-tune down to C or even lower, and all of the sudden the low end on the guitar is fighting for the same frequency space as the mids on the bass guitar. It just messes everything up. We've adopted a very trad approach, standard E tuning throughout, and if we've needed something extreme to happen, I've done it on the keyboards. It works. US and Canadian dates next year if all goes to plan. Will keep you posted. Free show entry for all HFCers I don't know, Scott. My guess is that the Invader is all about maxing gain at the expense of everything else - but the Tyrant is really not much louder than the SH5 it replaced and has a beautiful tone (to my ears, anyway). As a serious tone chaser, I also don't believe Mr.Amott would have put his name to anything which sucked - and this pup certainly doesn't.

Hotfooted it over to the studio last night and ran everything up at full bore through the full 3-head/6-cab stage rig. It's absolutely tremendous - a little brighter in the presence region than the Duncan SH5, but the low end really slams. It's almost like having a subliminal bass player in the room with you. The two biggest overall gains for me are the warmer mids which are voiced so, so nicely for rock lead tones, plus the fact that it seems exceptionally well potted which helps with feedback control. I really like it.

Mr.M, you crack me up. I don't even know if you can buy these things. But you're right, and I think he's the closest modern player to Michael Schenker I've yet to hear - I think it's his vibrato which does it for me. As an aside, MS is MA's all-time hero. he was telling me about how he jumped on a plane and flew to the Phillipines because he'd heard that one of Michael Schenker's original 50-watt Marshall heads was for sale there. It was, and he bought it. It's nice to know that even guitar heroes have guitar heroes

Over the years it's been my pleasure to be on here, I've read numerous posts when you guys have changed pickups, and ranted about how great the improvement has been. Now - as someone who has used the same combination for 25 years, that should tell you more than a little about my meat-and-potatoes-don't-fix-it-cos-it-ain't-broke mentality. Your pickup posts were usually greeted with a wry smile - because I never believed that a few coils of wire and a magnet could really make that much difference. A coupla months ago, I had the honour of meeting Michael Amott - he was at Andy's studio doing some overdubs for Arch Enemy's 'Khaos Legions' album, and apart from being an extraordinarily tasteful and gifted player, he's just the nicest, most ordinary guy you could possibly wish to meet. For those of you who don't know Michael, here he is; We got talking about guitars (surprise ) and after two or three further meetups, he approached me with a big grin and handed me one of his 'Tyrant' signature pickups (made by SD for Dean Guitars, I believe). It just lay in a corner for weeks and weeks - until today, when with a little time on my hands, I slipped effortlessly into 'nothing to lose' mode and popped it into my Standard. The difference is astounding - and for the first time in years, my fingers are now making the sound that's been in my head. I know that phrase will register with a lot of you. So....25 years late, maybe, but as the heading says - NOW I get it

Absolutely brilliant I'm SO stoked for you and your son. Thanks a bunch for sharing!! I also happen to know that scottcrud is gonna have some pretty cool news for us as well soon - but I won't steal his thunder. So in the same week......... HFC'ers are sharing great stories about Gary Holt and now Steve Vai. But you know what? We deserve it, because we're good guys who look out for each other, support each other, and are happy for each other when good stuff happens to us and our families. Way to go - sincere congrats to you and you son.

I felt kinda guilty posting the ebay link because I'd much rather prefer Hamer or the HFC to do OK out of this, rather than some generic guy in eastern Europe who'll print anything he chooses (although his shirts are twin-stiched Gildans and are actually very good). If there are some 'official' ones on the way via cmatthes or anywhere else, count me in for a bunch as well. I hope no offence has been caused.

"The shirt I'd like is the one our very own KB is so studly modeling" Always happy to oblige folks; http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HAMER-GUITARS-ne...=item27ad1bea9a It's not totally identical (it doesn't have the oval around it like my old one, they musta changed design at some point) - but it's black, good quality (mine's probably 5 yrs old now) and you get free shipping to the US. These guys are 100% FB sellers and come recommended. Go for it!! Edited to add - here's the link to the USA ebay site; http://cgi.ebay.com/HAMER-GUITARS-new-blac...=item27ad1bea9a

Great story, does so much to restore faith in honesty, human nature and the simple act of just doing what's right. Kudos to all involved, stories like this make my day. Edited to add - if you can pm me a PayPal address, I'll toss in my few bucks.

Killer tone, loved it It just goes to show (as if anyone on here needed reminding) that there's not much a Hamer won't do. Great job mate.

Of course not, just trying to spread a little joy and get myself a free Standard from the lucky winner Now I've reassured you how honest and HFC brotherly I am, if you can just PM me all your bank and credit card details.........

http://www.euro-millions.com/play-euromillions.asp Make sure the Standard's a black one

Just thought I'd give all HFC'ers outside of Europe a quick heads-up that the Euromillions lottery has remained unwon for weeks and weeks, and has continued to roll over and accumulate. It now stands at $227 million if any of you guys fancy a few online dollars on it. If any of you win, don't forget who told you about it. A custom Standard would be an entirely adequate way to thank me

ARCH ENEMY - Khaos Legions (OK - actually given to me by Michael Amott at a show we did with them in return for a HELL T-shirt) PAT TRAVERS - Makin' Magic vinyl reissue PAT TRAVERS - Heat In The Street vinyl reissue AVANTASIA - The Wicked Symphony (brilliant - features Bob Catley (ex-Magnum) on vox AUDIOMACHINE - Volume 1 Thanks to all those HFC'ers who have bought HELL's 'Human Remains' album. Your support is really appreciated and I'm glad to hear you're liking it so much. Off-topic - Plans are also in place for an upcoming US tour in late fall/early winter- would be cool to meet some of you guys in person if we can pull it off. Will keep you posted. All the best Kev

PM sent.

Hey guys, I'm sorry to be bumping my own thread - but I just noticed that NB USA are doing a pre-order special on the single CD version of our album (only ten bucks). Go on! You know it makes sense....... http://store.nuclearblastusa.com/Search/hell_human_remains

Short version reply - for this recording, we used; Standard (Seymour Duncan SH5 custom bridge/SH1 '59 neck) Ibanez TS9 standard Tubescreamer, everything on 11 o'clock Boss NS2 gate Peavey 5150 head Mesa 4 x 12" (the larger version) Close-mic'd using SM57 pointing straight at the cone Ambient room mic'd using Neumann U87 Recorded in ProTools, through SSL AWS900+ SE I take it you're not interested in details of my keyboard rig If you want the whole live setup and more info, please feel free to PM me

We've always done a lot of firebreathing as part of the show, and I've done it for so long now I can't really remember how/when I learned. there are some pretty good videos on YT which show you how to do it - but it's one of those things like guitar playing - you can be shown a hundred times but until you do it for yourself it's never going to happen; (there are a whole series of these dealing with the correct fuel to use, mouth technique, all the right stuff. And she's a pretty hot chick as well )Caveat is of course to say that it's DANGEROUS. Take ALL the right safety precautions, and do not (in any way, shape or form) take this reply as an encouragement to go try it and burn yourself. Best wishes buddy Edited to add - There are lots of YT videos which show idiots doing it very wrongly and very dangerously.

I love you guys, thanks very much to all of you - it means a lot, especially as I only posted it on here because of our shared love for Hamers and I'm proud of the fact that I'm wearing one out there in a band which looks like it's maybe going somewhere. Anyways, there are a few questions and answers and you'll know who they're meant for; Lyrical content - I'm genuinely sorry to the forum member the lyrics upset, because your beliefs and views are very much respected. Please understand that we're like actors performing a show - in exactly the same way that Sir Anthony Hopkins doesn't really eat peoples livers with fava beans and a nice Chianti. FFFFFFFF!! and the whole thing's very much tongue in cheek. I did indicate a kind of warning on the original post (not an excuse), but you have my apologies again. It's not intended to offend, just to entertain. The drums are mostly acoustic, but there are some triggered samples mixed in there as well, layered underneath the 'real' drums. Those interested in recording should check out an interview podcast (myself and producer Andy Sneap) being aired by www.rockchoice.com sometime soon - we talked about the recording and production quite a lot. The free Amazon download is 100% legitimate. The HELL track is part of a sampler which has been issued by Nuclear Blast as a promotional item. Guitar levels etc. - you're right - but please remember you're listening to highly compressed mp3 and mpeg4 format files which are being streamed. The multi-band limiting on these always sucks out the high end and upper mids, and this is the reason why some of the levels sound a little strange. The original CD sounds absolutely killer. Thanks again to all, best wishes edited to add - I forgot to mention that the Amazon sampler is only available for free download in the US.

The singer's my kid brother. It wasn't him, you have my word. I know every chick he's ever been involved with. Besides, he's gay. Someone on YouTube said that, so it must be true

Thanks guys - those comments mean a lot coming from you. Zorrow - there will be 2 versions of the CD - the standard one, plus a 2CD Digipak which contains a bonus CD with remastered versions of our old mono Philips fliptop cassette rehearsal tapes, along with a 30-page booklet dealing with the band's history. Plus - for the real old-school analogue lovers, Nuclear Blast are also releasing this as a limited-edition 180-gram coloured vinyl triple album with a great old-school fold-out sleeve, lots of colour and other cool stuff. Release date is May 13 in Europe and May 17 in the US. Info here; http://www.nuclearblast.de/en/label/music/...34927.hell.html Edited to add; http://www.nuclearblastusa.com/nb/v2/

My band's new video hit YouTube yesterday - around 22 hours ago, to be exact. More than 11,000 hits and almost 300 comments already can't be wrong. But be warned - we're a band who provoke quite a strong reaction - you'll either love us or hate us, and the nature and language used by some posters is a little savoury, to say the least. Enjoy.......

It's like these 'artists' who throw paint at a wall and then sell it for a quarter million to some misguided butthead who has more money than sense, or the dumbasses at places like the tate Modern Gallery in London who give space to a pile of housebricks with a £25,000 pricetag because they were thrown on the floor by an 'artist'. It's complete crap and I'm proud to be too unsophisticated to understand it.