Hamer Guitars: Amazing Custom Guitar Designs by Jol Dantzig. Handmade Guitars

Monaco III Guitar With 3 Lollar P90s

Just because we love this guitar, and it looks fantastic in Red Transparent lacquer.

Guitar-Making Details: Stacked Cellulose Binding and Purfling

Here's a fun little project that's unfolding in The Workshop right now. A very good customer of ours has commissioned an Artist Korina with some stacked tortoise shell binding. The twist is that he wants a natural ivoroid stripe on both the top and the side. Because there aren't any pre-laminated strips available, we have to lay them up by hand right on the guitar.

This is the first two layers being laid into the binding rout. The tort goes down first, then the natural on top. Just for fun, we decided to cut the whole outline out of a flat sheet, so that the end grain of the ivoroid will show on the edge of the guitar when we're done.

The next step is to glue the pieces of the inside upper binding on. You can see how the identical stripes for top and side have been done. The next step is to lay up the thicker tortoise strip into this.

Next, we do the same thing on the neck and headstock. Here you can see Tom making the miter joint on the lower strip at the fingerboard end.

We'll pick up the story a little later next time so you can see what it looks like.

Mike Chapman Visits Workshop

As much as we enjoy the solitude of our rural location, it's always great to have visitors make the trek into the woods to see us. This Friday, legendary producer Mike Chapman did just that. If you're not familiar with Mike's CV, I'll just direct you to his Wiki page for an astounding (and also incomplete) account of his acomplishments up 'til now. This was all the more fun for me because I've been a fan of his production and songwriting since the early 1970s when I was a confirmed Brit Music maniac. Over the years, we both worked with many of the same artists: Blondie, The Sweet, Lita Ford and The Knack. If you doubt the seriousness of his guitar playing, just listen to a collection of the songs he's penned or played on. His stamp is all over pop music spanning the decades. He's currently working on over a dozen projects simultaneously!

Here's Mike and Dave in the Workshop going over exactly where Mike would have his name on the headstock. Just as his reputation for precision and detail in the studio would suggest, Mike has very specific requirements and ideas about how his instruments should be too.

Here we are in the "The Vault" looking at the billets of figured maple. By the looks of that solid gold Rolex on his wrist, I think Mr. Chapman knows quality and timeless style when he holds it. We're looking forward to crafting a guitar in collaboration with him.

Surf's Up in Newport and Monaco: Scott Totten Checks in from the Beach (Boys)

Today brought a nice email and some photos from my old friend Scott Totten. Scott is a mega-talented journeyman guitarist and is currently the musical director for The Beach Boys. Yep, for real. Can't you just hear his Newport 12 string on "Help Me Rhonda"? 

Or maybe the jangly tones of his Monaco III on "Surfin' USA''  all while singing five-part harmonies (without auto-tune)!

Here's what Scott had to say:

Hey Jol, The top on my Newport 12 string is about the most beautiful I've ever seen.  It plays every bit as easy as a 6-string! The Monaco III is an incredibly versatile guitar, there are so many tones it can get.  And plays so smoothly, I actually use heavier gauge strings and it still feels great.  All that PLUS a great Bigsby! 

Scott

This is all pretty cool stuff for those of us in the shop who grew up on that surf stuff. 

But Scott isn't just about surf music; he's a true guitarist's guitarist. He paid his dues playing every night on Broadway for shows like Rent and Les Miserables. One of the first times I got to hang out with Scott, he was in the touring band for Tommy  and he got to play some of the best power chord songs ever written, under the direction of Pete Townshend himself! 

Here we are with fellow Tommy band member and Hamer player, Rick Molina in the orchestra pit in San Francisco in the mid 1990s. So if you want to know every chord in every Beatles, Beach Boys or Who song, Scott's your guy. Thanks for checking in Scott.

Talladega Guitar Neck Joint Video

In response to some emails asking about the Talladega neck joint, we've made a short video about the process. Obviously the video compresses the procedure somewhat, but I think you'll get the idea. 

Be sure to pause the jukebox music on the RIGHT hand column first. Enjoy!

Wiring the Artist Ultimate Guitar: Win a Hamer Fleece

Our recent post about the Artist Ultimate saw Todd leveling the finish before the final clear coats. This morning, he's finished buffing and is wiring the guitar. The Artist Ultimate receives a pair of humbuckers that are built by Seymour in his lab room as opposed to the shop. They are truly hand-wound and are signed by the man himself. Each pickup is measured and then cataloged so that if the owner should want a replacement, Seymour could match it exactly.

As you can see, this pair is serialized #65 which matches the guitar's serial number. That means this guitar is the sixty-fifth Artist Ultimate ever made! The instrument is delivered with all documentation and signed certificates.

We also shoot the electronics cavities including the pickup routs with a nickel based paint from Belgium. It's the most effective (and expensive) stuff there is.

Todd is soldering the electronics using twisted-pair, oxygen-free copper wire from Monster Cable. The toggle switch is custom made for us by Switchcraft with 24k gold contacts. The cavity is closed up with a grounded aluminum cover plate to complete the shielding.

Here are some shots of the finished details that we looked at in the woodshop.

Check out the crisp miter joints and the large pieces of shell in the purfling.

You can almost read the reflection of the Guitar World magazine cover in the headstock. Who is that on the cover?  I've got a black Hamer fleece jacket for the first correct answer.

Even the Ivory nut is shaped and buffed to a high gloss.

A little bit of set-up and play testing, then we wait a day to test it again. Any final adjustments can be made at that point, and then it's out the door. Somebody is going to be happy!

Jan Akkerman Guitar Trivia for Friday

I got an email from my friend Hank, directing me to a YouTube clip of a live performance of Focus doing their "signature" tune  "Hocus Pocus". This brought back some strong memories, for the guitar Jan played in the clip had passed through our shop back in the day. 

Jan brought it to us as a Les Paul "Professional" model with the walnut stain finish and big ugly low impedance pickups. Our job was to put a maple top on it and rout it for standard humbuckings and a four control set up; which we did. The woodwork and finishing was performed by John Montgomery in our basement workshop, and I finished it up with the assembly and wiring. I had almost forgotten about Jan and his famous hybrid guitar, but remembered something else when prodded by Hank's email today.

Here's  my photo of Jan, Backstage at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom, sampling one of our first guitars—a maple-topped sunburst-color flying V. This had to be around 1973-74. I wonder where that guitar is today? 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Jon Herington Checks in From Steely Dan Tour

Since the last post about Jon Herington's Talladega Pro we've been on pins and needles. Despite the large number of tours and studio dates we've made instruments for, it's always hard to wait for the news. Jon is a great musician whose opinion we value highly; I think this quote from the Steely Dan website says it all:

"SD's New Guitar Guy" — arguably one of the most coveted slots in the annals of popular music. And also, potentially, one of the most intimidating; few musical roles receive the same amount of examination, discussion, and debate as does this one. But Jon is handling it all with "perfection and grace"

It's rainy and cold here in New Hartford today, but this email from Jon lit up our shop like the mid-summer sun.

Hi Jol,

The Talladega is awesome! I'm using it a lot, and not just to give it some playing time and to check it out, but because it feels so good to play and because it sounds so good. I can't believe how perfectly you guys nailed the neck specs - it's the most comfortable Fender scale guitar I've ever played. I'm using a great amp which is kind to all the guitars I've plugged into it, but I believe I can hear the quality of the chambers in the guitar - a little airy kind of openness to the tone which I really like. With the single coils, it will do the Fender Tele thing but with extra elegance; less "cheap" grit, maybe, but more beauty, which, depending on the context, I like going for. It's a big tone, though, basically, which again, seems to be a combination of the longer scale, the good wood, the chambering , and the great workmanship. We've been in some noisy spaces, electrically, and I notice the unbalanced Unbuckers tend to buzz a bit more than "normal" humbuckers, even in double coil mode, but I do like the availability of the single coil tones, and I'm using them at times. My hope is the wiring of the theaters will be better than these studios. All in all I'm loving playing the guitar, and I've been reaching for it first most of the time.

We'll stay in touch about it. I hope all's well with you.

Jon

Wow! Thanks Jon. The thrill of making a guitarist's day hasn't diminished over the years. High fives all around the shop were had, and another chapter in the Hamer book begins as Jon embarks on the SD tour. We'll be sure to check in with him as the Tally gets some road miles on it.

White Vector Onstage

Tom Dumont posted this photo from the No Doubt tour and I couldn't resist putting it up here. The guys look so 1980s in this shot. I could almost imagine Tom with a pearl white Scarab II up there.

Have a nice weekend everybody!

Guitar Neck Joint Comparison

We've gotten some emails and at least one comment on the blog asking about the Talladega neck joint. It really differs very little from our usual full-width, tapered joint as found on all of our other models. One difference is that it doesn't protrude into the neck pickup cavity, which is like the Monaco model. This is primarily a function of the single cutaway design. 

Still, as you can see in the photo above, there's plenty of gluing surface available—even more than our double cutaway necks. It's actually much larger than the one used on the Standard model guitar which is no slouch in the sustain department. Just for fun, I put a "traditional" shouldered tenon neck in the photo on the far right just for contrast. That neck has been in our shop since the 1970s and came from Kalamazoo. Take a look at how much bigger our primary gluing surface is! 

Another factor is that our neck joints are tapered at the same angle as the fingerboard which creates pressure on the sides of the joint when being glued. On a straight sided tenon like the one on the far right, the only clamping pressure during bonding is on the bottom. The transmission of vibration is carried through much more area, and that makes for a more lively guitar.

Mothra Visits Guitar Workshop

This little guy was outside our loading dock, recuperating after a battle with a small bird. It has a wingspan of about five inches, about the size of a finch! Seriously, I'd never seen one this big—except in movies. It's name is cecropia, which is a silk-moth.

Not wanting it to get crushed by a truck, Mark scooped it up and put it in some grass by the river where it could rest up to fight another day. Sorry for no guitar content, but some days it's not about the guitars.

Steely Dan Tour Announced: Jon Herington Talladega Gets Buttoned up in Time for Rehearsals

Last time we checked in, Jon Herington's Talladega Pro was in the spray booth. Gary had applied a nice Ic'd-T burst (Yo) over an Oxblood back and then topped it with a clear coat dosed with a flattening agent. It was Jon's idea to give the guitar a patina that didn't scream "new" and I think that we did a pretty good job. Gary tried a couple different mix ratios until I felt we had just the right amount of gloss. It's funny—I had just posted a story about how hard we work to get super-gloss finishes, and here we are dulling one down!

The nice thing is that as it gets used it will polish up a bit is some areas to give it a real lived-in look without resorting to distressing or relicing.

Backing up a little, let's talk about the electronics. Jon had a working test-bed guitar fitted with different pickups at different times. His final preference was a pair of Fralin Unbuckers.

These pickups are unequal length tapped, which allows a single coil mode to be used that isn't just half of a humbucker. The tapped (or split) mode delivers a nice clean, snappy and articulate single coil-like tone that is ultimately usable. It was Jon's desire to wire the tone controls as switches so we installed push-pull tone pots to provide the single coil positions. 

The tone pots are first in line, then wired to the switch. The output from the three-way is fed to a master volume, leaving the fourth pot as a "dummy" in case we do something different later. I think this was a good move, as there's enough going on with al the coil switching that a master volume will vastly simplify things onstage.

I got quite a bit of time on Jon's guitar, and I have to say it was a very versatile setup. The Unbuckers in split mode did a good job of mimicking some Tele and Strat tones, especially in the middle position. The longer scale length (25.5") could really be made to cluck and twang. The bridge humbucker sound was fat enough for Bluesbreaker leads or classic Free tones with a welcome extra bit of "tap" on top of the note. Surprisingly, the neck pickup with the tone rolled back offered up some really sweet Joe Pass type jazz sounds. Overall, I thought that this guitar was a good balance of punch, girth and articulation—perfect for the wide span of material that Jon will be called to cover onstage.

And speaking of stages, Jon is heading into rehearsals with Steely Dan, so Todd got the whole thing buttoned up and out the door in order to be there on time. No matter how many times we do this, it's always like seeing your child walk out for their first recital, except the stage is a lot bigger!

Talladega Pro Guitar in Jazzburst

Just because we like to look at nice guitars... click on photo to enlarge!

Tommy Shaw Goes to Talladega

A few weeks back, I had a conversation with Keith Marks, who takes care of all things Styx, about Tommy Shaw. We were lamenting the fact that Tommy, whom I have known since our Chicago days, really should be playing a Hamer again. I suggested that Mr. Shaw take a look at the Talladega Pro for the big bad humbucking duties in the band's set. Keith (and Tommy) agreed. I grabbed the next Tally Pro out of the shop, put it in a box and out it went. We didn't do anything special as every one of our guitars gets the "pro" setup.

Yesterday, this photo arrived, along with a note telling us that the Talladega "ate the (insert other brand name here) for lunch."

There you go folks. From the bench to the box and right to the big stage—that's the way we do it here. When we say made to be played, we actually mean it! Thanks to Keith and Tommy for flying the Hamer flag again.

Talladega Pro Chamber Revealed

Since we showed you the Talladega internals, we've gotten some requests to see the Tal Pro chamber as well. Because each guitar was designed for a different character, they differ significantly in a number of ways. One of the first things you'll notice is that we haven't just taken a router and cut a pocket into the wood. Just like speaker enclosure design, there is an art and science to the shape in three dimensions not just two. The other component is the "undercarve" on the inside of the top. We don't just bond a flat piece of maple over the chambers, the top is sculpted to match the back—nobody said this was easy. Of course there are some builders who are content to just hollow out the back, but that's not our course. At some point I'll get a photo of that too.

Because the Pro is slightly thicker, we have more room to sculpt the chamber, and it follows the bevel of the back-side tummy rout as well. For this guitar, a gently curved shape is used, which helps the guitar's lower frequecies. The depth of the chamber starts out quite shallow in the foreground, and then slopes down to full depth behind the bridge in a kind of horn shape. Notice that there aren't any sharp corners. Once again, it is a combination of finding the right amount of resonance and taking vibrating mass out of the guitar. The result was a much more mid-range sound that suited the humbuckers for our purpose. The overall timbre of the guitar is not as dark as a solid instrument either. Our idea wasn't really to mimic another design as much as to expand upon it, and the chambering was the last detail in doing just that.