Hard case for a Sunburst?

[Rich_S]

Do Hamer Sunbursts fit in a normal Les Paul case?  Mine's a lowly Slammer Series, so I'm hoping to find a generic hard case for it, but with a decent fit.

Suggestions? 

[cmatthes]

Yes - a 535 style (Les Paul) case should work fine.

[Caddie]

Be very, very careful.  I had a Studio that went into an EPI case.  It looked like a nice snug fit.  Packed it up, shipped it off.  It was treated to the UPS Custom Shop white glove handling.  It arrived with a cracked neck from the nut down to the 3rd fret.  Why?  Give UPS a break, after all they gave me a break!!  Not so fast.  The neck to body angle of the Epi & Gibson is different than our beloved Hamer Studios. Plus the headstock to neck angle is different too.  Sooo...our Hamers hang inside the case  like a lever with the fulcrum being the neck cradles.   

It doesn't take much of drop to input some effort to the body and the headstock accelerates up against the interior top of the case and schnepp goes  the neck.  

If you promise to only use the LP case to carefully and gently tote your Hamer Sunburst around it will probably perform quite sufficiently.  So will a high quality gig bag.  If you're gonna ship it get a Hamer case that is setup for a Studio or Special or Artist or Duotone. 

Sorry if that isn't what you wanted to hear but we'd all rather hear your bubble bursting now, than your sunburst neck schnepping later.

Just my $0.02 experience.  Actually when it was all said and done it was probably closer to a $450 experience when you take into account the lost value of selling a neck break repaired Studio vs a non neck break repaired Studio.  Its not that it lost any playability due to the injury, but regardless of how well done the repair was done (the repair was executed perfectly by our very own guitar witchdoctor BCRGreg) out of pocket loss upon resale was about $450.   Plus, how can you put a price on mental anguish and inventing creative new ways to curse out UPS. There are a finite number curse words.  The curser needs to fuel his creativity to put them together in new combinations and add prefixes and suffixes with colorful action words. For example: "Is this UPS Customer Disservise Dept?  May I speak to the manager in charge of resolving "Go F yourself in the A!  You J-offs need to close up your GD Custom Constantly F-ing up Shop! Noooooo, I'm not going to ship it back to you for repair! I don't need it getting more f'd up with your paste, Playdoh, and sh!dee fingerpaint!" claims."

Ah yes, you want our Assistant VP of Numbnutsology. I'll be happy to transfer your call. 20 minutes of Kenny G later your head explodes.

 

[atomicwash]

Here's a case I found that works. Not bad @ $70 or so.

I also tried my Sunburst in a newer black Gibson USA Les Paul case (lots of padding and dual neck support) and it fit well, but not perfect. As Caddie said, I would not recommend shipping in it. I would use both cases for local shows.

 

[Caddie]

That's a great picture to illustrate the problem!  Notice how the body fits into the case at the bottom of the guitar(by the rear strap button). Now look at the horns. They are riding higher in the case than the bottom.  Thats cuz the neck cradle is too high for 2 reasons. 1) The neck angle on a Hamer is flatter than the neck angle on a Gibson. 2) You made the problem worse with all that nice soft padding between the the neck and the neck cradle in the case.  All that padding raised the fulcrum. The padding looks nice underneath gramma's neck in the coffin cuz full rigormortice has set in.  All that padding is there for visual effect, soothing the emotions of the mourners.  "She looks so peaceful in that $35k coffin complete with box spring."  Box spring, why?  So if Gramma wakes up in the middle of eternity she won't have a stiff neck. 

Gramma's older sister sitting in the back of the chapel whispers to her friend "Good God, she was such a cranky old bitch.  I never could figure out why.  Bob made lotsa money, and left her with zillions."  The older sister takes another swig of coffee that she topped off with whatever was in that flask in her purse.  Nope, noooo....nobody noticed the flask Auntie Cranky.  Hey Auntie, howz bout sharing a little bit?

All that being said your Hamer Special looks so peaceful in that Gibson case.  "Rich_S makes plenty of money,  why didn't he loosen up that old wallet and buy a proper Hamer case.  Cheapskate, serves him right.  His beloved Hamer Sunburst could be accompanying that lame, funeral home electric keyboard. Imagine this hymm with a genuine Hammond B3 with a Leslie, being accompanied by Derek Trucks on slide.  Inspirational, truly inspirational.  Another swig of coffee? Hmmm,  sounds good to me."

OHSC is important.  Yo, Auntie Cranky, Cheers babe!

caddie