Uncle Thor's Hamer

On the fretboard or the back of the neck? I'd start with a damp or slightly wet and slightly soapy dish towel. If that doesn't take it off, Dunlop 65 cleaner on everything but the fretboard. Acetone works on my Ovation acoustics and solid bodies without disolving the finish, but I would be extremely careful to test before using any petroleum type of product on any painted or finished surface. Acetone will disolve plastic binding!!! Rubbing alcohol should be totally safe for the painted or finished surfaces, but I'd test it first just to be safe. For the fretboard I use Clayton's Lemon Oil which is a real lemon oil, not a lemony scented mystery product. Plain old mineral oil is fine for fretboard, too. I've never needed anything more than that to get crud off of my guitars. I don't use steel wool on the fretboard in order to keep from getting iron filings stuck in the wood or migrating to the pickups.

Who has experience with an IOS device for plugging a guitar into an iPad (or iPod)? I travel a lot and want to be able to play along with recordings with headphones, either using iTunes or any other free app. My current setup is a guitar and an iPod plugged into a Korg Pandora headphone amp (with lots of effects etc). There is some kind of impedance mismatch between the iPod and Pandora, resulting in lots of static. The iRig HD looks like a good solution. Plug in the guitar to the iRig, plug it into either the iPod or iPad. Plug headphones into the iPad/iPod Play along with songs stored on the iPod/iPad using the free Amplitube app or iTunes or Garageband. There seem to be several competitor products, though I am not certain they do exactly what I'm looking for, which is primary to play along with songs stored on the iPad/iPod. Your experiences and suggestions welcome.

There is no single guitar which will appeal to many. Everyone wants their own twist on it. Even the venerable Strat and Les Paul designs offer many versions. I think a "Working Man's" guitar will be durable, sound great, have some versatility, come in a really sturdy travel proof case, be comfortable to play (weight and balance), and cost less than $2k street price. Made In USA would be a big draw for many, too. It has to be delivered with a great setup and a perfect finish, which means a little bit of extra tlc from humans in the final step. The Ovation guitar custom shop website used to offer the ability to shop options. I think that is the place to start. Have a website which lists all of the options. Inlays, pickups, neck carve, fretboard, bridge/tailpiece, tuning machines, color, etc. Offer a visual simulation of what the final product would look like by piecing together images of the different parts and colors. I would offer pricing on the website and even allow ordering via website as long as there is some personal contact via phone (or skype) or perhaps email to verify everything. The ability to individualize the instrument would be a big marketing advantage. Let the customer upload a decent quality image for 12th fret inlay or for a headstock customization. I had a custom truss rod cover made for my daughter with her signature inlaid with brass into ebony. It cost very little. Something like that inlaid into the headstock itself would be cool. Or an image which could be embedded under the clearcoat would be great. Think like a 20 yr old with modern technology and how they prefer the web for shopping, and their desire for instant instant gratification. Make it super easy to see the options and place an order. After all that I think you are looking at perhaps 3 or 4 body styles. One semi-hollow in the Newport or 335 genre. A tele-ish, strat-ish, and les paul-ish solid body family. Offer excellent humbuckers or single coils from places like Fralin and Lollar. The new Ratio tuners look very interesting. Or 18:1 locking tuners. Offer TOM, wrap tail, sustain block and Floyd or Bigsby style bridges. Locking bridge & tailpieces for the TOM so they are easy to restring quickly.

A Kala brand U-bass. Its a uke, smaller than a guitar, but with fat rubbery strings tuned like a bass. Sounds great! Now I need to start learning how to play bass.

Just tune your guitar a half step sharp and you're all set! I keep several guitars in alternate tunings, though to be honest none are in higher tunings, usually some form of lower tuning or open tuning.

I hope we're not getting to far astray on this topic within this guitar forum. My observation, knowing several abuse victims closely, is that a very large part of the psychological damage is done by the other adults when the child tries to come forward. Whoever the trusted adults are, or perhaps a trusted older sibling, the abused child tries to tell what happened but is then told to hush up about it. The child is told she/he caused the abuse, or will be thought of as dirty or damaged, or will cause problems for the family, or perhaps even told they are making it up. There is no one-size-fits-all with how abuse affects the victim. The bottom line, though, is the child is indeed the victim of a criminal every bit as much as the robbery victim is a victim of a criminal. We live in the same area as Elizabeth Smart, with kids in the same age range. When she was rescued it was literally a party in the streets for the kids. Elizabeth was a hero to the kids for simply being alive and coming home. Kids need the message that they are not dirty or undesirable for having been victimized. I think we could greatly reduce the level of trauma in victims if the rest of society would stop sending the message that victims are somehow dirty. Seeing some perps harshly punished would also help victims.

We can never prevent all bad things from happening. But we can prevent repeat offences if we're willing to remove perps from the population permanently and if we're willing to make public examples of the perps (scare the living daylights out of anyone else who considers molesting a child), and we can work on educating the public that children are victims not co-perps of the crime. The first two steps require we be less civilized than we currently are. The last step is easy but requires admitting how big of a problem it is out there.

Whatever the cause, the cure is to make sure the perp never has a chance to repeat his/her crime.

Man, that sucks all the way around. A good friend of ours here in Salt Lake City had a bunch of nice equipment stolen. One item was a custom made electric violin. Amps, pedals, etc were also stolen. The police took the report but then failed to really follow up with pawn shops. You have to do the leg work yourself with pawn shops. They are supposed to send a list to the police of all items they take in, which is supposed to be compared to a list of stolen items. It never happened for our friend. She found most of her stuff in a local pawn shop a couple of months later. She even got a photocopy of the drivers license which the thief used when pawning the stuff and recognized it as one of the scum who had lived across the street from her. They had since moved, and the popo just shrugged their shoulders and said there was nothing they could do to track the perp down. I am glad your family is safe. With luck you'll get your stuff back and the thieves will get some good jail time.

I was smart enough not to ever claim I would buy no guitar. Mid 1970's Ovation Deacon, modified. Hot single coil pups (from an Ovation Viper of the same era), piezo saddles and preamp added, stereo output jack to split the piezo signal from the pups, and a Koa veneered pickguard.

There is no residual radiation in the food after being microwaved. So no danger of radiation or electromagnetic fields from your food. As far as healthfulness of the food, the only thing which strikes me as possible is overheating parts of the food in the microwave. Vegetables for example might have areas overheated and thus nutrients damaged. As the vege sits on the plate for a minute the heat evens out and you don't realize one part of it was superheated. Nuking a hot dog or reheating a lasagna won't harm the nutrition afaik. I've become the family chef and enjoy cooking from scratch. I think the big nutritional problems are most likely related to chemical exposure (pesticides, hormones, meds) from contaminants in the food, and nutritionally vacuous foods due to mass production. When possible I use organics (no not perfect by a long shot). Avoid canola oil when possible. I prefer simple home made sauces, dressings, and toppings vs prepared. The microwave is really handy for some things but most of my cooking is stove top or oven based. Or grilled outside.

I've been drooling over the Earthen Maple Studios they've got. There's just no way it is in the budget for a couple years though. Still, I go look at the pictures.

1) Earthen Maple Talladega or Studio Custom 2) Newport Pro in Tobacco Burst 3) Artist Koa P90

If Hamer stays dormant for more than a couple of years they are going to lose all of the tribal knowledge of the craftsmen who built Hamers. When a new employee comes in he can be trained by one of the luthiers currently building a guitar, but once production ceases the pool of knowledgable luthiers is going to slowly diminish, and their knowledge is going to fade even if they are working on Guilds or other instruments. A guitar is more than a spec sheet. A new Hamer factory can make better guitars. Or worse. But it will not be the same.

Yup I think that is one of the big failings of the Kaman group. Ovation, Adamas, and Hamer never had good websites. Try figuring out what your options are to custom order an Adamas today. First off there is no Adamasguitars.com!!! If you figure out to go to Ovationguitars.com and click on Custom Shop you get a flaccid marketing page "Be as creative with your guitar as you are with your music! For more information contact your Local Ovation Dealer". Really? How about an interactive site where one can select all kinds of woods, finishes, preamps, configurations, hardware, and colors. Build your design virtually and see a rendering of what it would look like. How about lots of pictures of custom orders past and present. Pictures of the build process. Pictures of the finished products. Pictures of shit-eating-grins on the faces of customers. Pictures of hot young female musicians on stage playing a Hamer (or Adamas or Ovation). Pictures of studly young men on stage playing their Hamer in front of hordes of fans. Something to get the prospective customer salivating over having a custom order and then letting him/her satisfy his modern instant gratification gene by building it virtually. How about a website which is a comprehensive resource on the details of the guitars. Not just an overview or some dry specs, but details. Newbies could learn and the experts could research. As to the actual products, idk. How many tele, strat, les paul, flying v, firebird, or 335 style makers are there? Is there really a demand for yet another? Some game changers are called for, which Hamer certainly did a bit of stylistically. Some technology advances are called for, a la Charlie Kaman's long list of inovations with the Ovation and Adamas.

Res, I've got a Newport Pro with the Seth Lovers humbuckers. A Seymour Duncan PAF. The neck profile is not thin, and definitely not V. Nor is it chunky. I haven't played any other Hamers to compare it to but I would describe it as a pretty medium kind of profile. In the hands of a real pro my guitar sounded amazing for jazz tones. In my hands not so much! He turned the tone knob down to about 5. Dunno, but there is truth to the tone coming from the hands. For basic humbucker tone it is fine. Not so 335 mellow, a lot better imo. I haven't played the PRS. For overdrive I think it sounds perfect. At least in terms of classic tones, not modern hi gain active pickup tones. The one complaint I have is that the bridge pup is harsh when the amp is dialed in for the neck pickup. Or, if I dial down the trebles for the bridge pup the neck gets muddy. The solution is to dial in for the neck and then when switching to the bridge to dial down the tone a bit. This is getting nit-picky with the guitar for sure because it is a great sounding instrument. I think if you generally prefer single coil sounds go with a P90 style pup, and if you prefer humbucker tones go with the Seth Lovers. I find the pure nickel strings to sound better, a little richer in harmonics and a little less harsh on the bridge pup. Currently I have the D'Addario flatwounds on it and they are superb for jazzy tones. Very good clean tones and light overdrive in a tube amp. For price, I think anything under $1k is a total steal if the guitar is in very good or better condition. A nearly-new mint guitar in the $1700 range would be an excellent buy. Something about 5 yrs old or more and in very good condition would be a buy at the $1250 range. I am not a price expert, and these are what I would call a great value to buy at. If I were selling I would be looking for a several hundred more to feel I got a decent price.

My understanding is that a store cannot compel a customer to pay for damaged merchandise unless there was some kind of intent to damage. Even if you were careless in putting the guitar back on the wall, you are not responsible. You could turn around and claim the store is negligent because a falling guitar could injure or kill a small child who happens to be standing underneath it, so thus the store is responsible to have their merchandise secured. If they allow you to hang it up, they are still responsible for it being securely hung. Besides, anything more than a few seconds before falling seems to me like you must have put it properly in the hanger.

Greg, are you looking to hire? I can stand around, drink coffee, play Stairway on any guitars hanging on your wall, and supervise Tiffany.

Gaga does do a great performance and writes some good stuff. But she does seem high on the nasty scale. My 18 yr old does a killer acoustic version of "Bad Romance" on ukelele which always gets a good reception from the college and high school kids. The only vid I have is her doing it on guitar, and she was getting over a cold that night so she sounds a bit nasal. Sara playing "Bad Romance"

Uncle Thor's Hamer is an amalgamation. Thor is a Norse "hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, strength, destruction, fertility, healing, and the protection of mankind." per Wikipedia. Ancient Norse people wore pendants depicting Thor's Hammer as a religious amulet. A long-ago girlfriend from Denmark had two uncles Thor, affectionately known as Uncle Thor Number One and Uncle Thor Number 2. Fortunately they were not referred to as Number One and Number Two! Uncle Thor Number One gave one heck of a New Years party, with plenty of blonde Scandanavian beauties... but now I am getting distracted. The obvious similarity of Hamer and Hammer triggered an association with Thor's Hammer, which reminded me of Uncle Thor, and thus was born Uncle Thor's Hamer.

I used to use a dremel with a felt polishing wheel and jeweler's rouge. You have to mask off the fretboard, and even then some crud gets down on the wood next to the fret and requires a wet towel to clean off. Now I'm using very fine grit sand paper. Stew Mac sells stuff that is something like 4000 grit (pink colored paper) which polishes frets up nicely, and you don't have to mask the fretboard. They sell several other abrasive products that have very fine grit which should work just as well. I've used the abrasive pads to wet sand the pick swirls out of an old guitar.

There was a big study done maybe ten or so years ago. What they found was that any brand of natural oil was as good as any other. Buy for price. But the fully synthetics did do better than the natural oils at withstanding aging and also the synthetics stick to the parts when the engine is shut down. This provides lube when the engine starts up, the most critical time for engine wear. The semi-synthetics were no better than the natural oils. So, fully synthetic is best at lubrication. I use it in all our vehicles. If you don't want to use fully synthetic, skip the semi-syn and go to the fully natural oil. Whichever you use, change it and the filter at the recommended intervals. 3k to 5k for regular oil, 5k to 10k for fully synthetic. There is no problem switching from regular to fully synthetic according to everything I've read.

Used Ovation for under $500. At around $1k you're looking at a used Adamas, the carbon fiber topped Ovation. No Better Sounding Guitar, Period. Alpep at lostartvintage has quite a few very interesting Adamas in that price range. The carbon fiber top is quite strong yet it has an amazing touch-sensitive playability. The acoustic tone is pure heaven, though each model has it's own flavor for sure. In the wood topped Ovation line, there are a number of great guitars available used or new. Though I love to support the workers at the factory, new USA made O's are out of your price range new. Used offerings would range from 35 year old round-hole with simple electronics all the way up to mint modern designs and various preamp modules. For strictly plugged in use, a shallow bowl will be great and will feel much like an electric. For acoustic non-plugged-in use, look for a mid bowl, deep bowl, or deep contour bowl. They do offer some wider nut width models as well as their standard width.

The basic rule involving music or software is that it must only be usable on one machine at a time. So you have to wipe it off of your computer if you sell it.

This is a surprise and is upsetting. But the world will go on turning. Jol will land on his feet doing something that he enjoys. Maybe he wants to try his hand building custom sports cars. Maybe he'll start his own brand of guitars. Whatever he does, he's proven he has vision and the ability to succeed. I hope the craftsmen at the factory will keep working, nobody does it like they do! Their skills are remarkable among an elite subset of designers and builders. Times have changed, and the 80's shred era is fading. Hamer will have to find a course that fills the future needs and desires of guitar buyers. Maybe they can create markets, or maybe they will have to find them. In any case, their new leader better have a good vision of where Hamer should be going. It seems doubtful that FMIC will kill the brand or the products outright.