Jump to content
Hamer Fan Club Message Center

Hamer Studio Re-electronification


Menehune

Recommended Posts

A while back I bought a 1993 Hamer Studio from an HFC member who owned it just long enough to decide he really does prefer 25.5" scale guitars. It came with a DiMarzio Virtual Hot PAF at the neck, a Duncan Pearly Gates Bridge, and high-ratio Schaller tuners with ebony buttons.

StandardStudio5.jpg

 

It also, surprisingly, came with Jin Sung 500K linear taper volume and tone pots. That's how the selling HFC member got it. I'd love to know the backstory on that transplant.

StandaedStudio3.jpg

So besides now having a platform for the set of Charlottes that were cooling their legs in my pickup parts box, I needed to rewire this girl. A short order to Mojotone for 500K audio taper pots, some cloth-covered wire, an orange-drop .022 µF cap, and some amber top hats, was delivered quickly. I also wanted to add treble bleed bypass circuits to the volume pots, but was disinclined to buy a bunch of resistors and caps and cobble together test circuits with alligator clips to find the best compromise. So  I bought two V-Treb circuits, which have a trim pot that lets you vary the R of the RC circuit to dial in the amount of treble bleed. After making a crude wiring jig out of cardboard and mounting the potentiometers into it, I wired them up.

StandardStudio4.jpg

The Charlottes came with chrome covers - Josh recommended them for, as I recall, balancing the strings' output. The bridge Charlotte mounted just fine, but the Studio's neck pickup pocket is a hair under-routed, and that pickup with cover would not fit into the pocket. So off came the covers (damn!), in went the pickups and, with final soldering, the thing came together. Amber knobs replaced the gold ones to complete the job.

StandardStudio1.jpg

There's a little buzz in the first fret of the D, G and B. Might be that second fret needs a little love in its middle from the fretting hammer, or maybe just leveled a shade. But the Charlottes sound great, and the action is very good. I'll hang onto this one for awhile.

Still tinkering with the V-Trebs across multiple amps. Glad I went with them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Menehune said:

There's a little buzz in the first fret of the D, G and B. Might be that second fret needs a little love in its middle from the fretting hammer, or maybe just leveled a shade.

Try putting just a bit of relief in the neck first if you haven't. It may just be a bit too straight.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, gtrdaddy said:

Try putting just a bit of relief in the neck first if you haven't. It may just be a bit too straight.

Yes, I should go back and recheck neck relief. The guitar arrived with a huge amount of relief, which I eased up to flat and then then backed off a smidge. I'll also need to check string heights in the nut slots, and then recheck bridge height.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...