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

Hamer Monaco Graces Keb' Mo' CD Cover

Regular readers of this blog will recall Keb' Mo's visit to the workshop. He'd already been a convert to Hamer, having comissioned a pair of Monacos after his first taste of a Korina Newport.

 

Originally outfitted with Lollar P90s, Keb found the noise level a little too much for his taste so he upgraded the guitar with a set of hum-cancelling Duncans. It didn't take long for "Big Red" to become his main stage and recording guitar.

To our delight we discovered that Keb' has a new CD out featuring some live tracks as well as new studio material. We're certainly flattered to see "Big Red" on the album cover too!

 

Thanks buddy, we're proud to be a part of your team. 

Genuine Materials for Genuine Guitars

Another week is upon us as we get on with the business of creating genuine and authentic American instruments. We like to use premium materials for their beauty and depth as well as their functionality. This morning Dave is trimming a neck with mother of pearl pieces—the biggest ones he can find. In this case, it borders a black ebony fingerboard and matching ebony headstock faceplate.

You can see the finished effect on the headstock curve at the bottom of the photo. Take a close look and you'll notice that the curved piece there is so long that you can't even see the end here. Think about how large the blank had to be in order to cut that curved piece from it. The easy way out is to use a bunch of small pieces and just angle them one-by-one around the curve. But that wouldn't be our way. Our clients are buying the effort not just the effect. Most people wouldn't know the difference, but we're not making these instruments for them.

Another place where we spend more time and money is the string nut. Reclaimed and fossilized Russian ivory has a depth and glow that is far beyond bone or synthetic materials. Not only is it cherished because it is rare and beautiful, it has a hardness and lubricity that helps the string slide through. Here, Todd has just finished setting up a Newport with a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard. We use a graduated spacing that increases as the string gauges increase. Your fingertips sense the space between the strings, not the center of the string. That's why or guitars feel so friendly to play. As always, it's the little things that add up.

Plenty of Workshop Action

As the week progresses, there's plenty of chips flyin' in The Workshop. At one end of the room Todd is working on set-up of a left-handed Korina Special with a wrap around Tone Pros bridge. At the extreme opposite side of the shop Dave is fabricating the neck for a Standard 12-string bass.

This one has a rockin' quilt top and a matching quilt headstock which is in the shot above. I asked Dave to take some photos of the process so that we can show you how we take a slice out of the same billet of maple for the headplate. It's a pretty cool little detail that we like to do on our guitars. I'll put that up a little later.

Meanwhile somewhere in between the two extremes, here I am leveling the sides on the quilt-topped Studio we featured a few weeks back. Hand blocking the finish between coats is essential to our process for a couple of reasons. It takes the orange peel out, it keeps the finish thin and it also opens up the lacquer to let more solvents escape before trapping them with additional coats. I can't wait to show this one to you when it gets buffed!

Night Tiger Roars on Monday

As the week begins with a cool, crisp New England morning, we're hunkered down in The Workshop doing what we enjoy. As Dave and the guys in the woodshop prep the whitewood for the paint room, Todd is tackling the leveling on a Talladega with a special finish for a special client.

The quilt maple has been finished in a color we've dubbed Night Tiger, and even with its deep hue it retains the iridescent movement within the figure that our finishes are known for. The guitar is rimmed with multi-ply binding that looks great against the dark cherry color. It's going to be a great week in the Workshop!

Stacked Purfling Guitar Ready

We've been documenting the progress of the Korina Artist guitar with stacked purfling for a while now; and at last it's ready. Todd did a wonderful job on the leveling and buffing—the guitar is as flat as a sheet of glass. I love the way the hardware is reflected in the lacquer. The changing grain of the ivoroid is apparent in this shot.

The bookmatched limba top is joined in a tasteful chevron pattern and subtly carved into an arch. You can see the little details like the inset strap button. There's a rubber shock washer under the button to prevent the finish from being damaged by pull from the strap. From this angle you can also see the interior ivoroid purfling stripe inside the F-hole.

One place where we don't skimp on the effort is the tip of the headstock, or "scroll" as we call it. With the grained ivoroid showing here it's doubly important to level and buff the finish properly too. This is one of the things that separates our workshop from production shops and factories. Next time you're in a guitar store, take a look at this area to see how much care the builder puts into the places people don't usually look.

Schaller tuners mix fine German engineering with vintage style. With most of the other "famous" brands being built in China now, these are some of the last tuners being made to a high standard. They're extremely consistent and we rarely see one fail.

In this shot you can see the way the jazzburst color goes perfectly with the tortoise shell binding. Below you can clearly see the side purfling grain as well as the F-hole detail. The guys in the shop have taken the concept and added their own twist to go beyond what was asked of them—again.

Tuesday in the Workshop

Tuesday dawns cool, crisp and full of promise as we head into the tasks of the day. This is the time of year that many of us enjoy the most in New England, and the fall light streams into the shop with its flattering glow.

In the whitewood area of the shop, Tom is putting the final prep touches on a lovely quilt-topped Studio model. He's applied a light coat of Danish oil to help the adhesion of the first coats of nitro lacquer. This particular guitar has an ultimate-grade top and it's a sight to behold even before we get the clear coats on it. Somebody is going to be very happy with their purchase.

Over in the other corner, Todd is toiling away on the third round of sanding on the stacked purfling guitar. Each leveling takes about an hour, and it's one of the reasons our finishes look the way they do. Todd is using a hand block and a 2000 grit wet-or-dry paper to get the finish totally flat. Then he'll move over to the buffing wheel for another hour of polishing.

The thing I like about this guitar is that its simple appearance belies the huge amount of planning and handwork that goes into it. The details will reveal themselves slowly to the owner over time, which makes it a gift that keeps on giving. Substance over flash wins every time.

Limba Double-Stacked Guitar Coming along

As the August temperatures rise outside, it's cool and dry inside the shop—perfect for making guitars. Checking in on the double-stacked binding project finds good progress being made. Tom has finished the neck and the transitions are really beautiful.

There are a lot of ways to do this, and no single technique is necessarily the "best". We've always perched the nut on top of the headstock binding, so that's the traditional Hamer look we're sticking to on this build. It gets a little complicated to stack everything up, but we've never shied away from doing things the hard way.

Speaking of the hard way, a lot of you have written in to ask how we managed to lay the under-purfling flat around the body, so here's the answer. Here's Dave using the spindle sander to shape the inside outline (does that make sense?) of the piece that gets glued to the body first. He makes a tracing on a sheet of the cellulose material, then rough cuts it on the bandsaw (note the entry cut at the neck joint area). Then using the sander, he brings it to a very close fit.

In this shot, I'm checking the fit and marking where more needs to be removed. It's a matter of going back and forth until the sheet slips right down into the bottom of the binding channel. I like the way this looks when we're done, as the grain of the material reveals itself differently all around the body. It's a nice contrast to the top layer which follows the curve of the body as usual.

Bill Collings does a similar sort of thing on his headstock bindings, but I believe they cut the shape out on a laser. Sanding it by hand takes a lot longer, but that's OK as ours is only a single guitar. There's a lot of work in a one-off, but the results are going to be great.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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!