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Well, it was fun....... but it's over.


BCR Greg

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Over on the JCF forum a guy visited the Charvel shop. They are backed up - 600 CUSTOM ORDERS. That is just Charvel not Jackson or Fender. It is taking almost 2 years to get a custom Charvel right now.

Fender is probably shifting it's resources to where the market demand is I would think.

If you have any Hamers you want to sell now may be the time. Demand probably won't be there with the kids going forward as they will have never heard of the brand and none ot their guitar heros play them.

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not much to add here. except that I had a bunch of great custom orders built for my customers over the years and that I made many friends in the hamer factory and of hamer players.

I should take a pic of Sue's bass which I will still content is the coolest bass Hamer ever made for any one person and post it.

maybe I will just send it out in my newsletter.

To all those who purchased a Hamer guitar or any other piece of equipement from me thanks and I know we have forged a lasting friendship. and I am sure that I will still get gear that you want from time to time.

al

aka

alpep

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Strange how they go under and a company like Suhr Guitars is backordered a year. Music Man seems to be doing fine to.

Both those brands also know marketing and of course it's like beating a dead horse, but Hamer IMO shot itself in the foot many times over in that regard.

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Very sad news. I suspect the fine workforce may not get the same job satisfaction at Fender so we may well see a new company resurrect some of guitars we know and love.

Your right there Dave, that's why they're building Guilds for Fender :)

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Well, this sucks... even if in your gut you knew and were waiting for the ball to drop. Any time a quality, niche product gets picked up by a global, mass-producing mogul of a company, you know you're at the beginning of the end . So much for the 'we want a high end' custom product arm for the division; we will leave them alone to do their thing BS".....

It was wonderful. I love all the ones I own. I now wish I had all the ones I ever owned.

We are now all officially 'care-takers' of a fine piece of guitar history.

Greg Condemi

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I don't want to sound overoptimistic, but the more I think about it, the more I tend to think the "hiatus" word is a keyword here.

Times are just hard. Richer people aren't spending much money in high-end guitars anymore, and most kids have no money at all --and frankly, even if they had, they are more interested in trends and coolness than in excellence.

It just makes sense then to put the Hamer brand into the freezer, keeping just the import models around in order to not completely erase the brand from the surface of the Earth, and wait for better times.

In the meanwhile, the workforce will be used in higher-priority (read "producing more income") tasks.

I guess then it's not really dead, just actually put on a hiatus, as Dave mentioned.

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I should take a pic of Sue's bass which I will still content is the coolest bass Hamer ever made for any one person and post it.

Yes, this is long over due. That is the coolest bass, (next to Bootsys star bass). Had I been a man of wealth, and not just good taste, I would have ordered one myself. ;)

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Sue's bass = coolest inlays ever

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Times are just hard. Richer people aren't spending much money in high-end guitars anymore, and most kids have no money at all --and frankly, even if they had, they are more interested in trends and coolness than in excellence.

Didn't you abandon Hamer for Dean? <_<

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The Packard factory in Detroit once employed 77,000 workers - - at one site. 77,000. My father loved those cars, but that brand is gone, too.

I have owned three P90 Specials, an '80s Special, a 96? Artist Custom and I bought from Greg purportedly the last guitar (natural Standard, nickel) of the line about 2-3 Christmases ago. The cratsmanship on the Artist and the Standard (now Django49's) was incredible.

I understand that Hamer was a drop in the bucket to Fender but Fender is huge and plenty of companies keep brands and models alive. How many mid-management people does Fender employ trying to find a still-cheaper off-shore source (from Japan to Korea to China to Indonesia to India and someday probably Vietnam or Myanmar) ? And how much do those 17-hour plane flights cost and the "management focus" related to that? Couldn't Fender allocate some dough to keep the brand alive, even on a custom-order basis? If nothing else just to showcase the talents of the artisans who bring these to life? Talk about deep pockets. Talk about a custom shop.

The problem, as I see it, was that Fender introduced no new models to keep the line-up fresh. No Talladegas, no three soap bar P90s red Monacos, no Newports. The GuitarPlayer "Editor's Pick" awards that would have followed would have provided some visibility. Fender cranks out endless iterations of Jaguars, Jazzmasters, telies and strats. All thise Fender Special Runs. If they wanted to "revive" the various Hamer models they could have. None of this was done after the takeover. Look at it's distribution network. They could have goosed the visibility.

I wonder if Fender was worried that Gibson would bring some PRS-copycat trademark litigation if Fender started to produce instruments influenced by Gibson designs. That would have definitely sucked up cash.

There is more to this story than a lack of orders..

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Times are just hard. Richer people aren't spending much money in high-end guitars anymore, and most kids have no money at all --and frankly, even if they had, they are more interested in trends and coolness than in excellence.

Didn't you abandon Hamer for Dean? <_<

(...)Richer people aren't spending much money in high-end guitars anymore (...)

So yes, I did. Blame me! :)

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Strange how they go under and a company like Suhr Guitars is backordered a year. Music Man seems to be doing fine to.

Both those brands also know marketing and of course it's like beating a dead horse, but Hamer IMO shot itself in the foot many times over in that regard.

I'd say that's somewhat simplistic. Comparing MM, Suhr and Hamer is like comparing apples, ocean liners, and spoons. So many differences between those brands and Hamer, it's not even worth getting into.

-

Austin

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Strange how they go under and a company like Suhr Guitars is backordered a year. Music Man seems to be doing fine to.

Both those brands also know marketing and of course it's like beating a dead horse, but Hamer IMO shot itself in the foot many times over in that regard.

I'd say that's somewhat simplistic. Comparing MM, Suhr and Hamer is like comparing apples, ocean liners, and spoons. So many differences between those brands and Hamer, it's not even worth getting into.

-

Austin

I didn't intend to compare the brands -- just making my personal observation about marketing and its importance in relation to the original post about MM and Suhr doing well.

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Andrew - you can still spec out a 40th Anniversary any way you like it, but it will be a true "air guitar". ;)

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Andrew - you can still spec out a 40th Anniversary any way you like it, but it will be a true "air guitar". ;)

Ruby red Standard, black binding, rosewood and crowns, sustain block bridge! Original headstock shape with stadium logo.

I am strumming it already!

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I was thinking how cool it would be to order a Gold-Top Studio, cream binding, Tumbling Boomers on the fret-board, and a stadium logo'd headstock......

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