Hagstrom II

Aquired in 1986. My Hag II came to me in a box. It was completely disassembled with all the wiring cut and everything removed from the pickguard. A local music store offered me $75 to put it back together. A couple switched were broken but a trip to Radio Shack fixed that, although they didn't quite fit I massaged them until they did. I didn't have any idea how the original wiring was so I wired it with a tone switch, which was correct, and a series/parallel, which wasn't. After getting it assembled, I tried it out and wow! I wanted it. The neck was truely impressive. Very, Very Fast. I offered the store $25 for it and they said yes. The body is somewhat beat up but it plays great. It has the original single coil Hagstrom pickups, which I believe were built by Hagstrom. I've heard, but can't verify, that each pole piece is individually wound rather than the usual one coil for all the pole pieces. When I got it the original tuners were gone so I put Gotohs on it.

The main feature of this guitar, and Hags in general, is the very fast neck. As other have said, it is very thin with very low action. The best neck I've ever played in almost 40 years of playing. The frets are on the small side and require, for me at least, very short fingernails. The tremolo has a locking screw which I use, not being a trem player. I don't have the trem arm.

I don't know what the body wood is but the neck is maple with either a mahogany or rosewood fretboard. Most likely mahogany. Did I say it was thin? It is the thinnest neck I've ever played. Actually, it is the best neck I've played.

I love the sound of this guitar. I play mainly clean using the neck pickup and the sound is warm and rich. A great bluesy sound with a lot of bottom and rich detailed highs. Recently I started using a Dyna Comp compressor and found the bridge pickup gives a gorgeous chiming sound reminiscent of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and the Pretenders. With both pickups on it sounds somewhat like a strat in the 2 or 4 position. With my custom wiring job, the series position increases the output considerably albeit at the cost of some highs. I play it mainly through a blackfaced 1971 Vibrolux Reverb. This is a near perfect match. It sounds good through my Mesa Mark IIB but the Mesa doesn't sound as good as the VR, but this is true with all my guitars. It's noisy around the computer monitor and other RF sources but it's not too bad. I really have grown to like the on/off switch, very handy. Of course, only the very best guitars have this feature. Sustain is a bit weak but that is to be expected on a guitar this light. A touch of compression solves that problem.

The only weak spot to me is with overdrving an amp. I find the sound on the weak side. For OD/distortion I usually use a humbucker guitar, either my Moonstone or Aria Pro PE60.

This is a well built guitar. Hagstrom had a very good reputation early on but never sold as well as they should have. Since I setup this guitar myself, I can't comment on the factory setup. My setup is perfect, with very low, fast action and no fret buzz. I suspect the factory setup was similar. The best action on any guitar, bar none.

It's lasted for a long time and is still among the best guitars available. Mine is somewhat beatup and still plays great. This is one tough little guitar.

???????????? I don't think so.

I've been playing since 1967. I've played a rather large number of guitars but this Hagstrom is my all time favorite. Recently I started going through a compressor and like that a lot. Before that I occasionally used a VooDoo Overdrive pedal but usually went straight to the amp with no effects. I've had this guitar for 20 years and really would hate to lose it. It is my main axe. My others are for more specialized use.

I think this would make a great guitar for both seasoned and beginning players. The price of these is still on the low end in spite of the high quality and incredible playability. If you can find one, or a Hagstrom III, grab it.

This Swedish hag...I mean beauty was made in 1967. This is you standard 22 fret double-single coil. Everything on this guitar is original, nothing has changed since 1967, The original white finish, the pickups, the switches. This is one beauty of a Swede, and that's an understatement.

It is a really good guitar for blues and jazz, but my favourite use of it is plain and simple rock and roll. It has a nice sharp treble, which suits me fine if I'm playing The Beatles, Stones or my personal favourite Franz Ferdinand. The bass is quite strong and full as well. There is not really too many options to it, only Low and High and tone and mute options, but I prefer it that way. I haven't really had any use for the tremelar but it sounds great the way it is anyway.

Hagstrom has always had the reputation as the fastest playing neck ever, they are absolutely true. Really low action, you don't even have to think about pressing down on the fret. The white finish still radiates beauty, has definitely its battle scars, but not too badly. It doesn't effect the sound and structure.

Will this guitar withstand live playing? Absolutely!!! It is a great and durable guitar. I expect no problems with this guitar until I'm 40 and I'm 18...so that gives an idea.

There is a Hagstrom Guitar Company, but they won't help you for this here guitar. The first Hagstrom company in Sweden closed 22 years ago

If you can get one of these Swedish beauties, go for it. Absolutely a worthwhile purchase.

I love my old Hag... for a vintage guitar with a tailpiece similar to a Jaguar, a Fender stlye headstock and a sexy SG body at a fraction of the price of Fenders and Gibsons, look no further.
I got this baby from ebay and despite the fact that she has been refinished and had dimarzio humbuckers (with split coil option) this is my number 1 guitar...
I have some love for my vintage Mustangs, but this is my gigging guitar> and as everyone knows, it has the thinnest and most playable neck available

this is somewhat customised, with dimarzio humbuckers with a split coil option thanks to the crazy new wiring... a great guitar to customise as it loses none of its character- damn sexy. I normally use the single coil sound - great sustain and sings better than a Mustang and I love Mustangs more than life - this just feels great and begs to be played- get one while you can... the ebay prices seem to be rising

great low action and easy to adjust
solid guitar
good sustain

perfect for gigs- vintage and yet not delicate china... alternative enough as to not be leered at by Fender thieves and holds its tune- strings are very easy to replace quickly thanks to the strange hole slot tailpiece... I'm in love

Hagstrom's are(were?)made in Sweden and this one was my second electric guitar. After cutting the ends of my fingers off on a Woolworth's cheapo Christmas guitar, I decided to keep at it and get something better. A friend of mine in school said he had one to sell. He'd lost interest. I, who knew nothing of guitars, go look and what do I see? A Fender look-alike with 2 single coils, one knob(volume) and 42 slider switches. Actually, only four. Tone, Mute, Pick-up Select and On/Off(?!). Double offset cutaway, a-la-Fender Strat, but thin-bodied with no contours. The headstock even looked like a post-CBS Fender. LARGE, that is! Metal sealed tuners of indeterminant lineage, and all wrapped up in Arrest-Me Red with a white pickguard. I'm in love, but try to maintain. I plug it into his Western Auto 2-watter and...discover the world's slimmest and fastest neck. And a whammy bar. Oh, joy! The neck sold me. Never mind that the sound was a little tinny.

Did I say the sound was a little tinny? Oh, yeah. I did. Anyhoo, after parting with $40 cash that I couldn't afford, I got it home and plugged it into MY Western Auto 3-watter. I was amazed at the many different sounds that came out. On one pickup, it sounded trebley, say...like a Tele. With both on, it fattened up to a more HB sound. Not exactly, but close. In fact, "not exactly" is the best description of the sound I can give. It sounded sorta like other stuff, but was unique. Fast forward to 1976 and I'm with a part-time bar band. Still got the Hag, but NOW I'm running it through an overdrive/distortion, MXR Phase 90 and an original Crybaby. All into an Ampeg VT-22 howitzer amp. Now all things are possible. Fender proto-metal(Deep Purple), skanky southern rock(Lynyrd Skinyrd)and others not so definable(Johnny /Edgar Winter). Even Grand Funk sounded good on this thing! The only thing I didn't like were the contortions necessary to change tones.

Looking back...it was pretty well made. The neck was comparable to the Ibenez Wizards of today and the action would adjust fairly low before the buzzing started. The whammy bar was a bizarre design, but it held tune, even after demented sessions of Hendrix worship. Switches were absolute sh*t. I replaced them with toggles at some point. Body and neck were tight(for a bolt-on), so sustain was decent. The tuners NEVER went out of tune. The pickups weren't adjustable, but since it sounded okay, I didn't care. I stripped the finish and redid it natural wood. The body appeared to be basswood or something similar. Looked good natural. The chrome finish on the hardware lasted for years with no oxidation. Remember, this guitar had a few years on it when I bought it. Volume pot got scratchy at the end.

This guitar withstood the abuse of the unappreciative. Several years of live gigs and spilled beer. I never had it quit and it always kept the same sound no matter how many times I refinished it. Three, total. As solidly dependable as the citizens of it's country of origin.

Hagstrom was alive for some of the time I owned this guitar, but I never needed them. Did all my own work. Hagstrom's now belly up.

This guitar was stolen by a SOB with no soul. He later died from a drug overdose and I'd like to think that the Viking Gods in Valhalla sh*t on his rotting corpse daily. If I hear about one for a reasonable price, I'd seriously consider it.

This guitar has really cool features. It comes with the standard volume knob and a tremelo bar. Thats about normal for most guitars. Where this thing differs is with its switches. It has an on/off switch for each of two single coil pickups. It also has a mute switch for turnign the guitar "down", plus a tone switch that toggles between fatty and thin tones. FInally, it has an overall ON OFF swithc. YOu can turn your guitar off. Very interesting. THe guitar has the thinnest neck I have ever seen. Very fast.

The tone of this guitar is very thin. Not much beefyness to it. In fact I am a bit disappointed with the tone. The sustain is not very good on this unit. The neck is bolt on which accounts for alot of that I believe. Also when I play the higher frets with distortion and reverb it "flails"....or warbles...kind of interesting sound. I actually like that part of it sometimes.

Action is pretty high. COuldnt lower it without contant fret buzz. Finish is lower quality. I had to sand down the neck and refinish it with tung oil. Very worth while!

This thing is contantly going out of tune! I wouldnt beat on it to hard lest it beat you back!

The guitar is nestaligic 1967 style. I would keep it just for its rarity and fun history. I dont use mine much becuase it is so needy.

I bought this as a teenager for 60$ can and that was aloooong time ago 30+ years
evrything about this guitar structurally has been mentioned , plus the super slick neck the whammy bar stays in tune too after use

Its a hot sound that is highly configurable with the tone and pick up switches

the action is awesome very low great !!!!!

as mentioned by others the swithces area little twitchy, thank god for wd40 its amazing for anyone who has tempermental switches

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its all original never replaced a thing
this thing has never seena guitar shop in its life !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Made in 67, 22 fret, volume, tone and mute switches, 2 single coil. One bad ass guitar.

Great sound, those 2 singles put out sooo much. I bought a Zoom 505 II shortly after, and the guitar just puts out so much. Very low action. Very rich warm sound. Perfect for live, studio, recording, anything.

When I got this off of E-bay, it still had almost all origional pieces. Some cosmetics, but that's normal with any 33 year old guitar.

So far, after having it for 2 months, it's held up to a 16 yr. old life(i'm 16, in a band). But I'm so careful with this thing, all the dings are probably from me(no one else touches my Hagstrom!!)

Being that the company stopped in 81, can't really write anything here.

Well, i've been playing uitar for almost 2 yrs now, and this Hagstrom is a hell of a lot beter than my Squire Strat hands down. I'll never give up this baby. This guitar is perfect, I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!

Hagstrom IIs, as documented in a few of the other reviews, were built in the late 60s in Sweden. This one is a sunburst finish, with the same complement of two single coil pickups with a switch for each, plus mute, tone and on/off switches. The switches are rather old though, and need to be fiddled with fairly often, but once you get them right they stay that way, so it's not too annoying. It's got that funky Hagstrom whammy setup as well, which seems to be faulty on mine - fortunately, I never use them whammy thingies.

Tuners are vintage and are pretty nice for an old cheap guitar - none of that annoying play zone when you switch directions on it.

The neck is quite thin - They designed guitars right back in the day, it seems. Even the cheap ones. The body is sort like the bastard child of a Strat and an SG.

I'm not much of a distortion player, but these pickups are pretty hot - Aside from the single coil hum, this would make a great punk guitar - and it has, for people like Pat Smear (Germs, Nirvana, Foo Fighters) and Mudhoney.

For clean sounds, however, this thing is sweet. I have heard better, but the sound is decidedly pleasant and fairly unique - very bright. there is a bit of hum, but not enough to bother me.

I wish this had been a III - if I get the chance to buy another vintage Hagstrom pickup I'll be throwing it in the middle position, out of phase and see if we can't get some quack out of it.

I'm going to point out that it wouldn't take much for Hagstroms to become real collector's items - I got lucky with this one, but even at $400 this would have been a good deal. If you see one of these guitars for a good price, and it almost definitely will be, grab it. These were built with a great deal of love.

When I first saw this guitar in a pawn shop, I took notice - it seemed to have a very positive aura around it. I picked it up and was very impressed with the neck and the action. It's a little bit beat up, but it strikes me as the type of nicks and dents that come from this guitar being played for a number of years (but not too many - the rosewood fingerboard is hardly worn at all), as opposed to real abuse. I knew, after playing it, that this guitar would work hard for someone who was willing to cherish it.

The owner of the shop told me that he was consigning it for his accountant, whose daughter had had it for 25 years or so. From this, and the condition of the guitar, I would deduce that it was bought by a player new, and was probably used for gigs and playing and such until 1975 or thereabouts, which is probably when it came into the daughter's hands, who put it away for all this time. I certainly wouldn't characterize this as a guitar that's seen 30 years of use.

There were a few minor problems - one of the slots in the nut was worn down so the 3rd string buzzed when open. I put a couple of layers of paper into it and problem solved.

I just wish I could hear the story of every one of those nicks. :>

I can't say with clinical certainty that this guitar will stand up to playing, as I've only had it for a few hours. But something tells me it will.

Hagstrom is long gone. I read above that Pat Smear was looking at reviving the name, but I've heard nothing about it since.

As I said above, I love this guitar. I consider the price I paid ridiculously low, I would be very sad if it were to be lost or stolen, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy another Hagstrom if the opportunity presented itself.

I got hooked on these guitars while playing nightclubs in L.A. in the late 60's-I was playing a Vox bass that sounded awful and was so neck-heavy that it was a pain to play-especially 6 nites a week! I bought a used Hagstrom II bass, and it was a dream. Light, good tone, well balanced, fast neck and inexpensive. I have a sunburst 6 string III and a 12-string II. They're Swedish instruments made in the 60s and 70s. Strat style with 3 single coils on the III.

You can't get a Strat sound out of it, but it has a very trebly treble pickup which is nice mixed with the other. The switches occasionally crap out and you have to clean them with contact cleaner. Usual single-coil noise. Best it ever sounded was through a vintage Bassman tweed. I play it through an old Polytone now. I had it rewired to have 2 of the pickups out of phase, and that helped.

Biggest problem is the switches getting oxidized

very dependable guitar

This strange little guitar was built somewhere around 1967 in Sweden as a sort of generic alternative to Fenders. They went for about $100 back then, so I've been told, but have become collector's items in some out-of-the-mainstream kind of way, so go for up to $400 nowadays. It's got 22 frets, and is a standard double-cutaway solidbody electric guitar with a rosewood fretboard. It's got all of the original hardware, except I fitted it with a Gohtoh Tune-o-Matic bridge because of tuning problems with the original one. It's in near mint condition, and the pickups are all original: two high output (almost ridiculously) single coils. I don't know much about the materials its made from, but judging by the weight, I'd say the body is built from Alder, or some cheaper alternative. It's fiesta red with a black/white/black layered pickguard; the original finish. It's got big psychadelic tuning machines on it, which are stock Hagstroms. The entire guitar is very small scale; almost comparable to a Mustang, but a little bigger in length. The neck is exceptionally flat, almost like an Ibanez. The electronics configuration is interesting: It's got Mustang-style sliding on/off switches, one for Low, one for High, one for Tone, and one for Mute, and then one standard volume dial. It's also equipped with a standby switch in the same fashion, but I modified it and put a spring-mounted temporary toggle switch in it's place, for the sake of a little experimentation. It's an unbeatable value when you consider the price, and I bought it because the scale and style really fit my preference. They could have been built a little better, maybe a little less generic, but they are just cheap junk, really. I heard Pat Smear of Foo Fighter's fame is going to purchase the rights to the company and start producing them again. That should be interesting...

It's my favorite guitar that I have, and can't really imagine not having it. It fits me just perfect. My setup goes as follows: Peavey Classic 50 head/Peavey Classic 50 4x10 cabinet/boss SG-1 Slow Gear Compressor/Vox Valvetone Overdrive/original MXR Phase 900/boss dd-3 Digital Delay/original Electro-Harmonix Big Muff fuzzbox/ZOOM 509 Modulator effects processor/boss FZ-1 fuzzbox/Digitech XP-100 Whammy-Whah/guitar.
Only excess noise I get is the inevitable single coil hum, which the compressor nearly eliminates. The guitar can cover the entire sound spectrum, from the meatiness of a Les Paul to the bizarre twang of a Mosrite. It offers some exciting sound variety because of it's on/off switch configuration, rather than the conventional three or five position toggle switch. It makes room for some creative combinations.
Overall I like the variety the guitar offers. The only small problem with the electronics is sort of inevitable in a vintage guitar; every once in a while there is a ground problem or a little buzz or crackle, but that's pretty easy to fix.

It's hard to tell how the guitar was set up when it was first built; it's seen a lot of action and had a lot of owners. It's still got all the original parts and everything still works great, though. When I bought it (at a guitar show in Columbus, OH) the way it was adjusted as far as the string action and the pickups, was pretty whack! Probably the result of the previous owner's infinite wisdom! I adjusted it to my preference and also adjusted the truss rod. It appears as though someone, somewhere along the line, attempted to sand off the decal on the headstock. The decal still remains, though, and there's no evidence that the neck has been replaced because the patent sticker is still on the back of the headstock. Besides, I don't know where anybody can get a Hagstrom decal! I also noticed that the finish is a little over sprayed on the lower cutaway. It's barely visible, and I have no reason believe the guitar was refinished at any time. The finish job is professional, besides that small flaw, which I can assume happened at the factory and was just overlooked by the inspectors. It's a bit generic, so I doubt the company had quality standards like Fender.

It's one of the toughest cookies I've seen. It can easily withstand the onslaught of beer cans being hurled at high velocities. I've tweeked the hardware a bit and updated it, and have had no problems in three years of owning it. The finish is professional. The strap buttons were a problem when I first got it. They were made of plastic (don't ask me!) and had deteriorated over time, so I replaced them with some Jim Dunlop locking buttons. It's as dependable as any vintage guitar. I have no backup!

The company has gone out of business and production, and I bought it from a private owner at a show, so there was no warranty. The only repairs I've needed to make were small enough to do by myself.

I've been playing for just about 9 years, since I was seven. I also own a mongrel home made stratocaster, a Fernandes Telecaster knock-off, a Peavey T-14, a Peavey Raptor, an Epiphone Sorrento and various other projects that I collect and mess with. I actually have a really neat Guild semi-hollow guitar that I got for free in a junkyard in Talahassee. It was outside during a hurricane, and is nearly destroyed! Amazing, but it still works! It's a pretty rare guitar; I don't know what model, but it's REALLY small and has one pickup and F-holes and one cutaway. The serial number sticker is still visible through the F-holes. I wish to restore it when I find time. I can't imagine my Hagstrom being stolen or lost. I wouldn't buy anything else. I'd devote my time and commitment to an international man hunt for the culprit! I can't think of anything I don't like about it, except for little things. It could have been built a little better, and could have been designed a little less awkward, but that's just my opinion. I was searching for a crazy "surf" guitar when i got it, and I compared it to several other Hagstrom models, as well as a few Mosrites. I got it because it was cheap, in good shape and felt right for what I was looking for. It's a mysterious little thing, and I wish I knew a bit more about it's history.