Any Talladega Pro owners here?

[moozak]

wow... good initial review! i can't wait to hear more about it (and see pics of course!)

thanks!

[GaryT]

I'm GLAD your Happy with it my Friend. Isn't it a Great Feeling to come upon a Great Guitar and with just a bit of Tweaking they become Pure Bliss? Enjoy

[veatch]

Mark,

Have you played the originally Tally as well? If so, how do the necks compare? Like Austin, i've been hoping to get a comparison between the necks on the two.

Tanx. Congrats on the guitar, and +1 on the pics.

[MarkF786]

I had a long day at work yesterday so I only got a little while to play the Tally Pro last night. I put on nickel strings so now I can compare the sound of my different Hamers, though still one difference is I have 11s on the Monaco Elite and Newport, and 10s on Tally (my preference for the corresponding scale length).

A side comment: the TonePros locking studs are a pain in the arse. I wanted to raise the action just a hair which isn't too easy with these studs. First ya gotta remove almost all the tension from the strings, unlock the studs, adjust the stud height with a poorly machined tool they provide which bend when I used it, relock the studs, retune the guitar, check the action, and repeat as necessary. It kind reminded me of adjusting the truss rod on the heel of the neck of a strat, if you know what I mean. On all my other guitars (including one wraparound), I can adjust the action very easily with only partially removing the tension from the strings. IMHO, the locking studs aren't worth the aggravation. Oh well, it's a minor inconvenience and I can always put on normal studs.

The Tally Pro has a warm sound, but still a hair brighter and snappier that my Monaco Elite w/Seth Lovers. It's probably a combination for a few things: all the obvious differences between the guitars (especially the scale length) and also minor things like pickup height, string age (only about a week's difference), and string gauge. But the two guitars are definitely in the same ballpark in terms of sound. Depending on what I was playing, I can see one guitar might fit a song better than another, but if you had either guitar alone it wouldn't be too noticeable.

One area where the Tally Pro sounds better is with distortion. I was experimenting with my Rat and Big Muff through my Allen Sweet Spot (a boutique Princeton Reverb clone with a 12" speaker) and there was better note separation on the Tally. And the rear pickup with heavy distortion really sounded great playing chords; very full and not muddy at all. This weekend I'll spend more time in this area when my daughter's not sleeping.

One other small note: as expected, the Tally Pro has tons of sustain and I haven't encountered any dead spots (which I find on some guitars when playing with distortion and a one note quickly fades to a higher harmonic all the time). The Monaco is the same in that category, so I couldn't say one is better than the other.

More to come... and pics.

P.S. I'm starting to think the finish difference on Hamers are very minor. Maybe the two used ones I received we're accurately described, but the Iced Tea looks just like the 59 Burst. The Jazz Burst is slightly darker around the edges but still looks very similar. The downside to this is my wife keeps saying, "Why do you have three of the same guitar?!"

Mark

[veatch]

The downside to this is my wife keeps saying, "Why do you have three of the same guitar?!"

Use some female logic:

"If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand."

Congrats again, and tanx for the report.

Ice tea is similar to 59 burst, but JazzBurst is more like TobaccoBurst.

[gorch]

This is going to be a pretty nice T-M comparison.

Mark just head on. Don't feel bothered at all.

Btw.: for some reason I had difficulties to load the Hamer homepage. New site on the way or just web distractions?

[MarkF786]

Just a few comments today... After I've owned the Tally Pro for a while, I'll try to condense everything in a cohesive review. I've realized over the years that it takes a little while to get to know a guitar. Heck, I've even had the experience where I bought a guitar while I had a cold, and because of the congestion and headache I didn't like the sound of the guitar, but after I got over the cold I loved it.

I'm becoming convinced that the difference in scale length does make a dramatic difference in tone; I've always thought that it probably would, but I never had the opportunity to compare guitars that were similar except for the scale length. Here's a link to a transcript of a lecture by Ralph Novak (the inventor of Novax fanned frets) on the impact of scale length on tone : Transcript of Ralph Novak’s Lecture on Scale Length and Tone to the 1995 G.A.L. Convention. I'd love to see a comparison of the Monaco Superpro to the Talladega Pro. I suspect that if you put Seth Lovers in the Superpro, it would be very similar in sound to the Tally Pro.

I'm still undecided about the wraparound bridge. Though there are wraparounds that are compensated for a plain G string, the Tonepros isn't one of them. It is noticeable at time - though playing in a band situation it would be negligible. I returned the Pigtail bridge I had for a nickel model (I originally bought it for my Koll, but it has a Wilkinson adjustable wraparound which works pretty good, so the Tallly could benefit from it more). I might experiment some with different bridges until I find the "perfect" one.

I think Hamer needs to embrace more boutique parts for their guitars. Think of Jon Herington who chose Fralin Unbuckers for his Tally Pro. Hamer's craftsmanship is up there with some of the best boutique builders, but then they use mid-quality part like Seymour Duncan and Tonepros. Heck, I'm not knocking SD or TP since they are both good brands for a good price (well, TP's parts are a bit over priced and their support sucks), but for a little more money they could use something better. If they switched to something like Lollar pickups and Pigtail bridges, they would be up there with Collings. The devil's in the details.

Kind regards,

Mark