Hamer Artist Custom Korina 3P

This is a stunning one off Hamer Artist produced by thier renowned custome shop. It is basically an Artist with the standard double cut body, however, this puppy is made out of rare Korina wood, with a light honey/amber see-through fininsh that shows off the beautiful wood grain. The set neck, which is nice and fat, is also made from Korina with a rare Brazillian Rose Wood finger board with Hamer's Victory fret markers. The one strange thing about these fret markers is that they're off-set to the left (starting from the first fret and then gradually come into line as they march up the neck toward the 17th fret - - same as my Monaco III. It's either an ongoing fault or just the way it is!
The wonderful thing about this guitar is that it has tortoise shell binding all the way around the neck, the body and on the inside of the single f hole which makes it truly a thing of beauty.
The guitar has 3 Seymour Duncan Antiquity Mini Humbuckers with one vol, one tone and a 5 way rotary switch (why oh why can't they use a straight Strat style switch - - rotaries are just plain useless and damn annoying). The set up is much like a Les Paul with stop tailpeice and separate bridge which makes setting up nice and easy. What's really cool is both the stop tail peice and the bridge have these little grub screws that screw up against the posts so the bridge peices don't fall off when you change strangs or turn the guitar upside dowm. Cool!

I'm a 'rusted on' Strat player but have this constant need to search for something different. Why I"ll never know! Every time a find something cool, I end up ditching it casue my ears are so tuned into that wonderful woody, quacky sound of a good Strat that whatever I get (and I've had 'em all) never quite does it for me. Well, say no more, because this Hamer is just amazing (actually, so is the Monaco III). Not only has it got it's own unique sound but also, when you wind the vol back to 9, it's a super quaky Strat with the 3 Mini Humbuckers completley changing character by taking on the extact tone qualities of a good Strat. The guitar is dead quiet and with a bit of volume on the amp, she just sustains forever and then, miraculously, goes 'over the falls' into beautiful singing feedback. One thing worth mentioning is Hamer's volume control, which is much like a Strat in that most of the action happens between 7 - 10, however, what Hamer does is give you a little more boost between 9 and 10 (shades of Nigel Tuffnel) which, with both this guitar and my Monaco III realy makes a huge difference to the sound, especially when you wind off.
I play my guitars through two Fender Relic Blues Juniors which are the find of the century. I tell you now, go out get one because they RAWK. Fender don't publicise the fact that the Relic Blues Juniors have the same speaker as their 65 Deluxe Reverb which means that the Relics are twice as loud as the standard Tweed Blues Junior which comes with a wimpy 30 watt Jensen versus the Relic which has a huge 100w Jensen Ceramic speaker - -the differenc is like night and day.
The only effect I use is an MI Audio Blues Pro OD pedal which in case you haven't heard of them, are THE best OD pedal on the planet. The MI Pedal (made here in sunny Australia) doesn'tt effect your tone and more importantly, keeps those lower notes nice and fruity without any of that crapy cardboard, boxy, flat sound you get from all the other pedals (I know, I've got them all!)

This is a hand made custom guitar and the finish is just perfect. Straight out of the box, the action, intonation, truss-rod adjustment, pick up heights, the way the nut was cut, the highly polished frets were, without a doubt, way beyong anything else I've ever seen (and I am super critical). The routing for the three pups is so good that you can hardly see any space between the wood and the pups yet they glide up and down without hitching or getting stuck. The book matched top and back are perfect and there's not one blemish to be seen anywhere -- I think it's amazing (but a little boring cause I like to set up my guitars). I tweaked the pups just slightly because I wanted the neck pup to be little brighter and slightly quieter than the other two so I just dropped the height 1 mm on the treble and 1.5 mm on the base and whilst I was at it, wound in the G string pole peice just a tad to obtain perfect vol balance bewteen the strings.

I've taken her out to three gigs. To be caustious, I had my trusty '56 Strat Relic on hand but ended up playing most of the sets with the Hamer. The shorter 24 3/4 inch scale takes a little getting used to as does the reduction in string spacing but I hardly notice it now.
The big test was playing the start of Hendrix's 'Little Wing' so I set the Hamer on position 4, wound the vol back to 8 and bingo, hello Strat!
I think the guitar will be strong enough to last through the various pub gigs I tend to find myself in.
I'll give it an 8 until we've had more time together.

Haven't had to call or deal with Hamer but everyone knows they have a great reputation for customer support.

I've been playing for over 40 years (don't laugh, once you're hooked your hooked)and still, at the age of 58, gig every week playing hard rock, blues and anything in between.
I own two Hamers, this one and a crazy red Monaco III with a bigsby, a Fender Custom Shop 56 Relic (sweet), a 52 Reissue Tele, a 1986 Fender Strat 62 Resissue which now has a 10 inch radius fret board (nice), a Gibson Les Paul Special with 2 P90's which is mad as a cut snake and very, very cool Italia Modulo Strat which is the 'Bling King'! Of all my guitars, the Tele is the one that I'll probably end up with as i sit in my rockiong chair at the old folks home. A rocking chair, a Tele, an old toothbrush and a few beers - -what else do you want?
Now if any of my guitars were stolen, I would simply call my insurance company and then take extra care not to let it happen again - - I'm not into violence - - it's a bad vibe to think about getting even with people.