Hamer Guitars: The Ultimate Hamer Guitar Fan Resource!

NightFire Talladega on the Wing

After a nice Thanksgiving break, we're back in the workshop and doing damage like always. There are lots of fun projects in house right now, some of which we'll be looking at shortly. But right now, let's roll the clock back to just before the holiday. Our Talladega with the NightFire finish was being buffed out and then assembled on Todd's bench.

 In went the Double-D pickups, four-way switch, volume and tone controls.

In this shot  you can see the matching headstock overlay—a slice of the same maple that's on the top of the guitar, and the abalone faceplate inlay. Even the tiny "USA" inlays are individual pieces! This order called for Schaller tuners, still the highest quality, hands-down. Our client wanted some impressive binding, and Dave came through in a big way. It's hard to do properly, laying each strip on  over the next, but that's the way we do it, instead of using pre-laminated plastic with the stripes already in them.

Next, Todd hand wired the electrical components, all of which have been specially sourced to our specifications. Old-school cloth covered wire, custom-taper potentiometers by CTS, and the Sprague "orange drop" capacitor get hooked up inside the control cavity using lead-free solder. The whole deal is sprayed with a nickel based shielding paint that we import from Belgium—it's the best there is. After sealing things up with our anodized aluminum back plate door, Todd cut the nut and strung it up.

 

In the set-up room we set the action, neck relief (.010" at the 8th fret) and then play test the guitar for a while. It's at this point that pickup heights can be set to balance the tone and output. I like to put the neck pickup down a bit lower than usual on the bass side with the Double-Ds. This cleans up the bottom end and keeps it from being too flubby. At the same time keeping the strings close on the higher strings fattens them up relatively. The bridge pickup has quite a bit of magnetic pull due to the large alnico polepieces and a large copperplated steel plate underneath—that how it gets its ultra-twang. You have to be careful not to get it too close to the strings or ghost tones can occur, which make the guitar hard to intonate.

 

Here's a nice shot of the ivory nut and the abalone Victory inlay at the first fret, another nice option. Todd has done a great job slotting the ivory. We use a graduated spacing that gets wider as the strings get thicker. Your fingertips feel the space between the strings, so our method evens that out as opposed to evenly spacing the centers. The result is the trademark Hamer feel that makes this Talladega such a joy to play right out of the box.

Speaking of playing, our covert cam caught a little set-up room jamming just before it went into the aforementioned box. Enjoy!

 

This Wheel's On Fire

Todd has finished blocking out the Nightfire Talladega and has it on the wheel this morning. He started the third and final sanding with 400p sandpaper, and gradually reduced the grit step by step  until he finished up with a micron paper that leaves the lacquer hazy but almost glossy. The next step is to use a yellow Menzerna buffing compound on a cotton wheel.

 

 We use an 18" diameter wheel with an rpm of 1100. We calculate Todd's "feed" speed at about 25 ft/min. which gives us a face speed of about 5200 ft/min. By listening to the sound of the wheel against the work, Todd can vary his pressure accordingly to control heat buildup. Typically, we see a temperature of about 150 degrees F. By heating the lacquer, we're actually moving it around and smoothing out the scratches. Too much pressure and the finish will melt and ripple when it cools. Not enough pressure and the haze doesn't burn off.

In about an hour Todd will be ready to go to the hand polish and seal the finish. We'll wait a couple of days to see how the finish settles out before going back to do our final inspection and final wax. It won't be long now!

Quilting for Comfort on a Cold Day

It's getting cold here in rural New England, witnessed by the field jackets stuffing the coat rack just inside the workshop door. Inside, it's warm and a pleasant humidity—perfect for guitar building. Just the same, if Tom feels a little chill, he can cover up with a nice quilt like this one. Now doesn't that warm your heart?

 

If this wood looks familiar, it's because the maple top is from a nice batch from the same tree that yielded the one Tom made a few weeks back. If you are the new owner of this guitar now you know that there's a fraternal twin sister out there someplace. Will they ever meet?

Wednesday Workshop Custom 12 String Bass

As the mornings get darker and the air gets chillier, we find the guys engrossed in their work. Dave is putting the string nut blank on the twelve-string bass that we saw earlier.

We use a black material that we call Lubritrak. It's a tough, slippery material that allows the strings to glide smoothly through the slots. We pioneered the idea of a self-lubricating nut with the introduction of this material in the early 1980s. It works great for tremolo guitars too.

After he bonds it down, Dave will file the nut blank to the proper width, height and shape. The next step is to stamp the serial number into the back of the headstock with a press. Dave gets the next available number from the book and loads the press with the stamping dies.

As Dave pulls the lever down firmly, the dies press the number into the wood. In this case, it's a maple neck. The second line will be the letters U. S. A. because that's what we're all about. 

The bass is now well on its way, but some of you are probably wondering what this twelve-string bass business is all about.

Thirty Two years ago, bassist Tom Peterson threw in the towel trying to get his Hagstrom 8-string bass to function properly. Cheaply made, with only four bridge saddle for eight strings and a thin, flexible neck, it just wasn't cutting it for Tom. When he approached us, first to improve the Hagstrom, then to build a replacement—we thought it was a fine idea. When things escalated to twelve strings, we had our doubts. 

Tom's idea was to create an instrument based upon the ancient Tiple—a guitar-like instrument with four courses of three strings each. Each course, or group, would have a standard bass string as the root and two more strings tuned in unison one octave higher. Tom's band, Cheap Trick was basically a trio with a singer, and the big sound he anticipated would be perfect to fill things up and act as a de-facto rhythm guitar as well as a bass.

The Tiple made its way here from Spain by way of Columbia as early as the sixteenth century. Tiples were made by many builders in the US such as Martin (pictured above) and Regal, in the early part of the last century. To be honest, we thought that the force of twelve strings on a bass would compromise the neck. We negotiated Tom down to Ten strings for the first whack at it. The plan was to triple the top two courses and use the standard eight-string, double configuration for the lower two courses.

Thus, in 1977, the first Hamer multi-string bass was developed and built. It wasn't as easy as just going out and buying the parts—they had to be made. I designed a bridge and tailpiece based upon the Thunderbird hardware, but with eight individual saddles so that Tom could intonate the octave strings separately from the low ones. I found a guy with a small machine shop to help make it, and then drove it over to the chrome plater down the road. These are still the guys who make them today! The bridge was a major improvement over original eight string. Incidentally, we constructed an eight-string electric mandocello for Rick Nielsen at the same time, and here's a photo of the two instruments together at the time of completion.

Tom took that first ten-string on the road, and when it stood up to the rigors of touring, it was time to make the world's first twelve-string bass. But that wouldn't even be enough for Tom, but that's a story for another time.

More Keb' 'n' Monaco

Couldn't resist showing this surprise inside the new Keb' Mo' CD. Now I've got to get back to work.

Monday... So Many Possibilities

Some folks dread Monday, but not us in The Workshop. As the beautiful New England fall sunrise burns the fog off the sparkling river outside our shop door, we're reminded of the possibilities we're handed each week. Can't wait to see what's in store.

Here's the fly fishing nirvana just outside our window—like living in a watercolor painting.