Hamer Guitars: The Ultimate Hamer Fan Resource! Amazing Custom Guitar Designs by Jol Dantzig. Handmade Guitars

From Concept to Stage in Eight Days

Generally speaking, we don't like to rush things—haste makes waste you know. I can't even count the times I've watched otherwise intelligent people throw away money in the long run due to impatience trying to get results quickly. However, sometimes a deadline is real, and the benefit of speed outweighs the potential for sloppiness. 

Our "mystery package" component guitar for Rick Nielsen presented just such a challenge. We needed to build a guitar in an incredibly short time frame in order to be photographed with a matching drum kit. The material, called citrus mod glass, was on its way from Bun E. Carlos even though we'd never laminated drum covering on a guitar, I knew we could do it.

 Dave and I had sourced some existing components that would work already, so It was just a matter of getting everyone on board with the idea of dropping everything when the stuff arrived.

Because we allow our necks to "normalize" over a period of weeks before machining the radius on the fingerboard we needed to find a neck already in progress. Luckily there was something on the shelf that had been rejected for a blemish. No problem, this guitar was going to be sprayed in opaque color and covered with drum nitron! 

It was then just a matter of cutting and gluing, with a little experimentation with the heat gun first. Gary shot the guitar with a PPG material that locks up in a few hours, and that allowed us to move the process along big time.

The guitar got boxed up on Thursday—six days after the laminate arrived, and by Saturday Rick had it on stage. That's teamwork and strategy. Nice work guys!

DuoTone on stage with Tom Dumont and Jol Dantzig

Hybrid guitars have been in the spotlight lately, with so many new versions from builders large and small. The simple truth is that our DuoTone, a workable electric-acoustic hybrid, has been available to serious performers since 1991. As usual, we were so ahead of the curve that most folks don't even realize we were there long ago. The DuoTone has been featured in the performances of Tommy Shaw, Dweezil Zappa, Ty Tabor, Chris Cornell, Jeff Tweedy, Stone Gossard, Elvis Costello, Freedy Johnston and dozens more.

In this episode, No Doubt guitarist Tom Dumont shows me how he's applied the discreet stereo outputs to the No Doubt stage show on this year's big tour.

Mystery Guitar Build Part Two

If you've become a fan of The Workshop, you've probably already seen this, but here it is on the blog. It's not in our nature to just slam out a guitar in a few days, but every challenge teaches you new things—even if what not to do. This exercise was really about making things happen fast, but we didn't want to compromise our standards (no pun intended) either.

We knew we weren't the only builder working on one of these, but just because we didn't have much time wasn't stopping us from being the best.

So, relax and have fun with it! Don't forget to pause the juke box in the right-hand column before you hit the video play button.

If you beat on it... is it a drum?

Guitars are percussion instruments right? Just ask Pete Townshend. Kurt Cobain knew how to pound on an axe too. I swear that half of the current crop of rockers are generating more rhythmic sound than any discernible pitch anyway.

Here's what happens when you connect the dots between drums and guitar in another way...

Film at five.

Mystery Package Arrives in Guitar Workshop

A package arrived on a Friday morning without any explanation. What could it mean? We did recognize the name associated with the sender, and we knew we were in for some long days ahead.

Stay tuned for more...

Sneak Peek: Korina Guitar Gets Headstock Inlay

Another quick look inside the Workshop today finds Dave placing the pearl inlay letters into the headstock of the multi-bound African limba "Korina" guitar. Pause the blog jukebox music in the right hand column before playing the clip.

 

Jol Dantzig On Stage with Tom Dumont of No Doubt

Scott is working hard to edit the video so you all can get a look at Tom's gear and see him demo some guitars on stage with our own Guitar Guru Jol Dantzig. In the meantime...

And this:

Custom Guitar Headstock Binding Update

Tom is moving ahead with our multi-ply tortoise shell binding/purfling project. here's a closeup of the pre-fabbed side pice on the headstock.

The side is the only place where he can make an assembly because everywhere else the binding will be curved. It's a good shot because it tells the story of how the entire job is constructed—sort of a cutaway view.

This is what it looks like when finished. It's not practical to make strips of built up binding and then bend them because even with heat you'd get massive distortion. This way, although very time consuming, yields a much more tidy result.

Meanwhile, Dave is sanding the f-hole binding flush with an orbital sander to check for uniformity before we go further with the body. We'll drop in again in a couple of days to see how things shape up with the neck.

Genesis of the Double-D Pickup with Seymour Duncan

From the Designer's Archives comes a video about the "Double-D" pickups designed by Seymour Duncan and Jol Dantzig. This is an evolution of the Phat Cat pickup and was specifically designed for the Talladega project. 

(Be sure to pause the jukebox music by pressing the pause button in the right hand column before playing the video.)

Monaco III Guitar With 3 Lollar P90s

Just because we love this guitar, and it looks fantastic in Red Transparent lacquer. This little devil will surprise you with jangly and shimmering tones that are usually associated with a certain type of bolt-on neck guitar. Then, with a quick twist of the chicken-head knob, you're rockin' with Leslie West style fatness. The neck pickup will do amazing SRV duties—what a versatile axe. One of my personal faves.

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.