Hagstrom HJ600

It??s a chinese natural hollow body jazzbox, 21 frets. solid and flawlessly finished. a few polishing issues that??s all. two humbuckers, two volume-knobs, two tone-knobs. well, details can be read on hagstrom.com

it??s a jazz guitar and it sounds like ??jazz. I love playing it plugged und unplugged. great guitar, great sound. of course I swapped strings for thicker 13s and had to adjust the bridge to get it fully in tune. Actually, I only planned on playing with the fretboard humbucker but the bridge humbucker delivers a great tone as well. not warm and jazzy but with loads of twang!! quite useful. haven??t tried to play slightly crunched but I??ve heard it should work well. I??m a clean jazz player though.

ok, bridge was not ok, up from fret 12 the sound was completely out of tune. took me some 10 minutes to fix that. finish, action...all perfectly!! solid, beautiful, no flwas.

strap buttons, toggle switch, tuners....all solid, I think it??s a guitar to rely on. time will tell.

been playing for 20 years now. coming from music school with folk and jazz-picking, few years of shred, now discovered my passion for Jazz and this guitar was the one to take home. other big brand jazz mamas (epi, ibanez) didn??t satisfy me. a matter of taste. the hagstrom fretboards are highly acclaimed and yes it??s damn fast and comfortable to play on. great quality, great smell, perfect fretjob, sexy body, fantastic looks...plugged into a fender tube it??s heaven. can??t put it away these days. the tone knobs are not very sensitive, but it??s ok.

I??d buy it again anytime.

2007 chinese made. Features already described below... Sunburst finish.

Tried it in a store on a PEAVEY tube amp. I played guitar for more than 20 years. Owned several archtops, both with a floating pup and paf type pup. I was VERY impressed by the quality and sound of this one. In fact, that's the best jazz guitar I ever played on! At HAGSTROM they succeeded in manufacturing a guitar with a retro look and sound and with a bit of modern technology (H expander truss-rod and resinator fretboard). This brings to a delightful instrument, providing at the same time a rich classical jazz sound with tons of sustain, almost like a solidbody!

Very nice finish, almost no flaw...

Looks solid!!!

Didn't buy it yet. Waiting for the new 2008 model (HJ-800) with a solid top!

I got 2 of these - both 2006 Made in China. The specification details are on www.Hagstromguitars.com (Flame Maple Sides and Back, Select Spruce Top, Set Neck North American Maple, Diamondwood - Ebony Fingerboard, 24 3/4" Scale Length, Custom 58 Pickups,Adjustable Rosewood Bridge, Hagstrom Trapeze Tail Piece, Natural Finish (quilted).

It's a classical Jazz Box design with a great look
I managed to get them directly from china as there is sadly no dealer in the UK (yet..)

Rating 7 (hey it's a Jazz box)

I play pretty much everything frmo Jazz to Metal.
This guitar is a Jazzer and does it perfectly. It should be played very cleanly or with very mild gain and there it would shine !
The pickups are warm - low output vintage style.

If you intend to use it for anything beyond Jazz/Blues styles - I would suggest many other players. If you are into Jazz - do give it a test - for the requested price of these Chinese beauties you get LOADS of tone.

The quality was suprisingly good for the sort of prices and Chinese usual standards (they seem to have a decent quality control wherever they make them).
One was absolutely faultless, the other (I bought 2 as explained) had a very few real minor issues of finish (I had seem similar on insruments 5 times more expensive).

The set-up was very good out of the box. No buzz, resonable low action and no serious intonation issues. Pretty much a "tune and play" - top scores on this one.

I'm yet to see people bashing Jazz Boxes against a Marshall stack....
Jazz gigs :) - yes it should do just fine !
with amount of wood in these boxes I could probably float on it if the ship I gig on would sink.

It's a new US Hagstrom dealer so it's not clear what sort of support we can get.
The few emails I sent trying to find info about UK dealer were ignored but they are only starting this new line .. so I'll give them the benefit of a starting company...

I have been playing on and off for many years but seriously in the last 7-8 years. I always buy/test and sell gear - it's fun and sometimes even some money is made out of it so the wife got no reason to complain. I own many guitars (maybe 1 in 10 stays in the collection and I have 13 or 14 at the moment so you can tell how many I go through).

It's a great guitar for it's kind and it does Hagstrom a great service - looks like the new breed of Hagstrom is exactyl what we needed - something that has good tradition, not expensive, great looking (amazing) and manages to stay away from the Gibson/Fender "safe" design clones.

If it would be stolen I'll run to check if my real pricy babies are still in the musi

This is one of the new Chinese made reissues. Made this year (2005). This guitar may be classified as a prototype since it was used as a sample at a NAMM show. I'll call it used since I purchased it through a third party. It is a medium body archtop with maple back and sides and a laminated spruce top. Maple neck. The body is 16" across the lower bout and about 2 3/4" deep. It has some custom made, Hagstrom repro hardware (tuners, tailpiece, pickguard) which is a nice touch. I hate it when I see stock hardware appear on models from various manufacturers. Why not just call them all Epiphones or Corts or Samicks and cut the crap?

Two pickups with standard 3-way selector / volume / tone configuration. The pickups are supposedly custom made for the Hagstrom models. It has a floating rosewood (?) bridge and a graphite composite nut. The 21 frets are medium jumbos. The neck joins at the 14th fret and the cutaway gives pretty good access up to the 18th. Scale is 24 3/4". It came with a nice Hagstrom branded archtop hardcase.

My guitar has a maroon sunburst finish, which looks pretty good. The new Hagstrom has taken a lot of the touches that James D'Aquisto designed for the original Hagstrom Jimmys and applied them to their new line of guitars. So this guitar has the "S" shaped soundholes, stairstep tuners and asymetric headstock.

This guitar uses a Diamondwood fretboard which is made of compressed and glued wood (birch?). It is very smooth and looks almost exactly like ebony. The new guitars also adapted the original Saab designed "H" trussrod.

The HJ600 sounds pretty good. Not like the original Hagstrom D'Aquistos, but a nice sound in it's own right. It gets a very good Wes Montgomery sort of tone. I'd call it half-way between a full sized archtop and a 335 style hollowbody. The mid-range is a little muddy to my ear.

Action on this guitar is outstanding. Hagstrom necks were always famed for being fast playing and this one is no exception. The Diamondwood fingerboard is very comfortable. The frets are very nicely done.

As far as the finish goes, there are a few flaws. Mostly these are in the category of not enough time spent in the polish stage. The top of the bridge is sort of rough and the inside edge of the pickguard needs sanding. One of the tailpiece screws wasn't tightened down completely. There are also a few finish flaws like a faint fingerprint at the neck joint and a little bit of unstained wood at a seam on the headstock. There are also a couple of small finish spray "spits". None of these are obvious and I didn't notice most of them until I had the guitar a few days and got to look at it in different kinds of light. But like I said in the other section, this one could be called a "demo", so hopefully they will look a little more closely at the production models

Overall, it seems like a solid guitar. It's hard to say how it would hold up as a pro instrument. At this point my gigging days are over so this one will probably never leave the house.

The old Hagstrom is long gone. I have no idea who the new Hagstrom is or where they are. I've heard that they are responsive to customers, but haven't ever contacted them.

I bought this guitar because I have a few other Hagstroms and love them. There is some question as to whether the new reissues are "real" Hagstroms. I think this guitar leaves the question unanswered. The '70s Hagstrom Jimmys were some of the few guitars that James D'Aquisto had a hand in designing (some mid-90s Fenders also) and his legacy leaves huge shoes to fill. At the price point these will sell at, they are very good values, IF they address some of the finish issues. I've seen some other Asian made guitars at this price that are flawless, even if they use cheaper hardware.

Hagstrom has been promising that these guitars will be released to retail for nearly a year. Maybe they are dealing with the finish issues I've seen in this prototype. If the guitar had a flawless finish, I'd give it a 9. One point off for the muddy sounding mid-range. As it is now, I give it a solid 7.