kevinbower1959

Way to go!! I'm really stoked for you and your son. As fathers, we hold these tiny bundles of baby joy in our arms and wonder how they will grow up. As a 'Metal Dad' I'm kinda proud at what happened to mine; Best wishes Kev

Cheers Dave!! I just sent a mail to Hamer US requesting a price on another standard (we have a small record deal advance which I just have to utilise in the most sensible way possible, y'understand) - I've asked'em for another Floyded one with a reverse headstock, abalone binding, 666-pattern custom fretboard inlays and a black cracked mirror top. We'll see................ All the best, Kev

Hi Steven, Welcome from another fellow Brit (albeit a filthy Sassenach). Cool guitar, and the right colour too It reminds me (shapewise) of my first 'proper' guitar - a cherry-red Gibson Les Paul P90'd doublecut special which I bought many moons ago (1978?) using the money my parents gave me to go to college with. Mirroring your admiration of Martin Barre, I bought the doublecut because Pat Travers (my hero at the time) was playing one. I too have gone down the import (XT) route although I use these imported guitars as spares because I'm fortunate enough to own a USA one. Here are a pair of my babies pictured below, complete with blacked-out 'XT series' logo on the import on the left. Not as good as the US original obviously, but with decent pups (S/D SH1 and SH5), decent wiring/switchgear and better hardware, a £200 ebay purchase was transformed into something which is just killer for the money. Finally, as a metal fan you might like to know that the 2nd guitarist in my band is Nevermore/Exodus/Cradle/Arch Enemy/Megadeth producer Andy Sneap. We've just been signed to Metal Blade, our album's due out in the 1st quarter of next year, so PM me with your address and I'll post you a copy when it's out. All the best, Kev

The one on the right is a full-on USA Standard from the custom shop, bought 4 months ago at a cost of $6k +. The one on the left is my spare - an XT bought off ebay for a coupla hundred, then fixed up with identical Seymour Duncans, a few aftermarket parts and an internal rewire for another coupla hundred. The overall cost of the XT was less than one-tenth of the USA equivalent. The XT's great. It plays well, it stays in tune, and whilst it doesn't have anything like the sustain or depth or purity of tone that the hand-made boutique equivalent has, it's still extraordinarily good considering the fact that it's a cheap guitar. Having said that, if I ever found another $6k hanging around in my pocket (!) I'd go for another USA model without a second thought. There are of course those who wouldn't, but I guess we all have to accept the fact that with any ultra-quality product, there comes a point when we enter the land of diminishing returns - the point where it's necessary to pay ten times as much for something which is only twice as good.....

We're all influenced by stuff we hear, and as human beings and as musicians, we have a built-in 'scratchpad' which stores stuff up from maybe years ago. You know the deal - you hear a great riff when you're a kid, you figure out how to play it, and then 20 years later a diluted version of that riff pops up out of the old memory banks and it's incorporated (almost subconsciously) into our own music without you really knowing where the hell it came from. It's a challenge which faces every songwriter on the planet, and you have my total sympathy................

From what you describe, IMO it doesn't get much better than these guys; NEVERMORE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP_EhEpPHjY THE HAUNTED ....now I know you said 'no keys and no cookie monster vox' - but this is IMO a total masterpiece (and it gets very melodic 2/3 through); DIMMU BORGIR Best of the bunch though (!!!!) will be the new HUMAN REMAINS album by HELL - produced by Andy Sneap (Megadeth, Killswitch Engage, Exodus, Testament etc etc etc etc). For a sneak preview, PM me your email address and I'll mail you a work-in-progress mp3. \m/

BMW have just started offering the same deal here in Europe. For a £5,000 premium, you get a brand-new M3 with bald tyres, a big split in the windscreen, a caved-in rear end which has been authentically hit by a milk truck, three or four patches of genuine rust, special interior lights with no bulbs, a full ashtray, a dashboard filled with candy wrappers and McDonalds cups, a gearbox filled with nails and a special grade of glue-like, jet-black oil in the motor. They haven't sold any yet. It must be the credit crunch.

Killer post, ZR. All I can say is that back in 1979, I was a kid with very little money, and my local music store had the greatest, most amazing selection of guitars imaginable - racks and racks of Gibsons, Fenders, Rickenbackers, Yamaha SG's, the whole deal. EVERYBODY bought these - they were just the instruments to aspire to, and I was no different, going through various Les Pauls, RD's and so on, over a 3 or 4-year period. Then one day, I walked in and saw this black Explorer hanging there on the rack with a name on the headstock no-one had ever heard of. No kudos there at all !! No pose factor !! To add insult to injury, it cost w-a-a-a-y more than a Gibson. WTF??? I played it. I loved it. I bought it. A 4-digit Hamer Standard, and I never looked back........

The 'Hamers from HELL'