Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame

Got some videos to add, but I barely have time to take a piss these days. My family arrives tomorrow for the big retirement celebration, stays for a few days after that, then I start my new job...

Awesome! Great job! The price isn't quite unbelievable. Darn close, tho. ...it's a shame about all that mold spotting on the back of the neck, tho.

Pictures are coming up...I'm just a little busy with a bunch of stuff that's higher priority right now.

I jammed on the WPS #5 last night. The intent is to get good enough on these 3 songs to not embarrass myself too much when I videotape myself playing them and post it here afterwards. Probably Friday night. That way on Saturday, I can spend my time videotaping other HFC folk playing it at the jam. It does have a really nice tone, really nice low end. Seems to make every note extremely clear. One of the best-sounding Hamers I've played, but not in the sense of "wow, what amazing tone" on the first strum, but more like "wow, that songs sounds really good on this guitar" and "huh. that part of the sound really sings on this guitar, as opposed to on my other guitars." If I had purchased this guitar, I would be extremely pleased with it, and would consider it literally irreplaceable for that tone aspect alone. Now that I think of it, that package I reported receiving last week wasn't the WPS #5, after all. I have never actually received the guitar. Yeah, that's the ticket, I never actually received it! No, I have no idea what happened to it, but clearly you can't expect me to pass the guitar on when I never received it in the first place, right? My wife emphatically did not say anything about how cool the stickers were on the outside of the case, and there is no way I would know that David B left a stack of download cards with writing on the top one saying "Take one!", of course. Because I've never actually received the guitar, I tell you!

from here.

How does SRV's tone on his covers of Jimi's songs compare? Did SRV nail the tone? Or is SRV's tone (even on Jimi's songs) clearly unique?

Remind me which of you have private guitar companies/lines. Northfield, right? Who else?

The only disappointment for me is that the headstock is blank. I would love to have the breaching whale insignia, but the Maui girl insignia would REALLY rock.

More video of the Russ Freeman (NOT the model I have):

They only made the electrics for 1 or 2 years, I think. I was on Oahu when they went public in Maui, so they were really pushing it in all the Honolulu guitar stores. I hadn't really started collecting guitars at that point, but these really captured my attention...probably because the humidity on Oahu changed so much in just a few hundred yards from out on the flats to in the shadow of the mountain clouds...and even in our barracks room, we emptied 5 gallons of water per day from the dehumidifier. So the weather-impervious aspect of it grabbed me. I finally played on one in Texas, of all places. I was at Goodfellow for training and ran across an acoustic in a guitar shop in San Antonio. Almost got it, but $2500 was just too steep for me to feel comfortable with. Was distraught when they moved to Washington and changed the build process. They've continued to modify the models and build processes, but I haven't been able to figure out if those are actual improvements or just cost-reduction moves. Graphite guitar companies seem to struggle, and many have gone under after just a few years. So back in 2002 or so, after passing on that acoustic in San Antonio, I pretty much gave up on ever owning a Rainsong. Then this past Christmas, I helped organize an office Christmas caroling session, and one guy asked if he could bring his guitar. He did, and it was a Rainsong. I got a chance to play it and it was just as clear and boomy. Some say they have a strange, un-guitar-ish sound. Rainsong itself says that it has an almost piano-like quality. I dunno. It sounds like an acoustic guitar to me, with really good bass with exceptional clarity and no unpleasant boominess. So I set up a search on eBay. Most are at least $1300, and are all new guitars. Saw a newer used one and nabbed it for $800. A little disappointed that it didn't show the kevlar/carbon fiber weave on the outside (although you can see it in the neck, and on the inside of the guitar. not sure why they made the outside more semi-gloss, but plain black. Stopped my eBay search. Then I saw that I missed an old Maui made one...it sold for just $620 or so! Agh. So I started it up again, just in case. And then last week someone put the electric up for sale. Original owner. Bought sorta NOS (purchased new, but 2 years after they ceased production). But he loved/cherished it so much that he kept in the case almost all the time, and rarely played it. Needed a little cash so put it up for sale. One other bidder pushed it up from the starting price to my limit with 4 days to go, then quit. Thought about it and I decided to go another $500 up to cover the last minute sniping, but it turned out to not be necessary. No further bids in the final 4 days from anyone. Turns out the other bidder (the only one) was in Norway and wanted it really bad, but with shipping and customs fees just couldn't go any higher. The seller was gratified because he was terrified of the hassles of overseas shipping. She is still pretty much NOS. The only wear on her at all that I can see is the EMG on the neck pickup is slightly rubbed off. Big whoop. I'm not sure, now, that I would call this a jazz box, but that's how I'm going to use it. This is the Stormsong model, and on their sampler CD, it only appeared in an electric blues song by Jay Levy. I had thought of it as a jazz guitar myself, but as I was trying desperately to figure out what it was worth so I would know how much I should expect to win the eBay bidding with, I ran across the existence of the RF-003, a Russ Freeman signature guitar: That one is an archtop with f-holes. In comparison, the Stormsong (JZ-1000, which "JZ" does imply it is intended for Jazz, no?), is a flat top and no f-holes. So my Stormsong absolutely works for jazz, but the Russ Freeman Signature sure seems more like a true jazz box to me. In comparison, I can only think of the Stormsong as a Hollowbody electric. @Carifish7, Yeah, it feels great to have a truly rare, unique, and expensive-for-obvious-reasons guitar.

It has a really nice jazz sound. Really strong electric sound, and a quite nice piezo acoustic sound...sounds more like a regular acoustic guitar than most piezos. Sounds great distorted and clean. It does have coil taps, but on first attempt, they didn't really do it for me. Not much of a SRV sound in the neck single coil, not much of a quack with n + b both in single coil. If it were a good single coil sound, the distance should be good enough for tele-quack, and it just isn't. But that was first shot. The more I play the more I'll learn to coax the best sounds out of it. I will use the single coil sounds, but if I want to get a real twangy notch sound I'll probably still go back to my Yamahas. I've been focused so much on my futile quest to play shred songs, but my strength really is in fingerstyle jazz. This is a sign, I think, that I need to get back to that.

Mine, all mine. But I'm going to have to sell off a few guitars, for two reasons: 1) It was the most expensive purchase I've ever made. Nearly three times as expensive as any guitar I've ever purchased before. 2) It is going to suck up so much of my guitar playing time, it actually makes it a little easier to simplify and cut down on the number of redundant guitar styles that I have. Like shredders. A very special note to Cynic (printed in white): No, the red Californian Elite is not one that will find itself on sale...sorry...

But they didn't just make acoustics. I wanted one. But I knew it was unlikely to happen in my lifetime. But life takes funny bounces. I became a military officer. I saved my money. I wheeled and dealed in guitars. And I finally got one.

This is the culmination of a 15-year dream. I saw a brochure for these guitars when I was a young Specialist in the Army, stationed in the Hawaii Islands. They were built in the Hawaii Islands. They were impervious to weather. They were too expensive for me then.

That's normal for the stadium logo. Both my Calis have the tail of the R running so far off the black you can't see the end of it, and my Chap has the tail going off the black (but not quite as far around). I think that's because the Cali headstock is slightly smaller or thinner than the Chap.

Sweet baby jeebus, whose is this??? Cool! It is Carfish7's. He has some sort of blackmail material on Feynman, I think, because that's who had it before him. Before Mitch, dunno.

Congrats to both of you!

no idea of cost. Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a magician.

Hamer Guitars, A-M

Did you want it to? If so, why?

I'm not sure I even can tire of this one. I know it didn't really grab you, but it hits the tonal sweet spot for my ear.

Please, please, please promise this won't be your Japan flag Cali...

Wait till next week Now I don't feel so bad about stealing those two guitars from you.

Congrats! That's so cool!

I still don't have a good grasp of how to play modes. However, I finally understood the concept behind them when I was trying to sing a song once. I was on a long trip with no music in the vehicle (rental U-Haul) and trying to stay awake. So I started trying to recreate some of my favorite songs, and even tried to write a song and keep all the parts in my head as I was driving. One of the songs was a latin jazz number. And as I sang it, instead of sounding cool, it sounded cheesy and lame. After about an hour of comparing my singing to the sound in my head, I realized that as I sang, I was raising one of the pitches by a half step. In effect, I was turning a Dorian scale into a Ionian. Maybe into a Mixolydian. I think. Point being was I got a lesson of how a scale can fit a given harmonic structure, but change one note by a half step and you change the character/tone/mood of the melody. The scale I was singing worked. But it sounded cheesy. The change of just one half step made the melody sound complex and cool. I still need to sit down and play with that to make that idea mine.