HSB0531

I couldn't have said it any better!

I'm glad you mentioned that because I did that to my Precision bass and the Red Standard. Both are volume controls only.

Sherman, Set The Wayback Machine to 2007 & Another C/O Build at the Hamer Shop. Words & Pictures by Jol Dantzig. December 19, 2007 "Kimono Gold" Greg V Talladega Project One of my inspirations for the Talladega came from listening to Greg V's CD Tailgate Troubadour. Introduced by a mutual friend, Greg and I developed a bond over the course of time I was immersed in the development of the Talladega and the Double D pickups. His input was instrumental in the direction I took. Our conversations about attack, decay and string separation drove me to evaluate pickup after pickup and prototype after prototype. When I shipped the first Talladega to Greg, I waited nervously for days before he called with his feedback—I wanted him to love this guitar they way I did, because it was so intertwined with our friendship. Happily, he did, and so does just about anyone else who's played one. Of course, as is often the case, Greg wanted a second one. For an encore, I decided to make Greg an even more special guitar with a cool finish based upon an eighty year old "lost art" technology that was used on old resonator guitars. I knew Greg was a fan of Gold top guitars, so I went ahead and finished off his new axe in gold crystalized lacquer and complemented the old-school appearance with distressed nickel hardware. It's not really a Designer model, but I wanted to share it, so enjoy. Oh, and don't forget to click on the photos to see 'em up close!

🤣🤣🤣👍

Then there is MAP: Minimum Advertised Price that the Manufacturer sets which is always the List price you see on their website.

When I worked at Sam Ash in the 1980's, we got in a few of the Eric Clapton Strats with the Lace sensor pickups and none of the guitar sales guys liked them.

With all the variations and colors and limited editions, it's a gamble for a music store or chain to know what to order. The amount of variations on an original theme that both Gibson and Fender offer is insane. I have an idea: Authorized Dealers will have mini Gibson/Fender 100% robotic/AI factories with CNC routers, drills, sanders, paint booths, hardware and more, in a sealed-off room with a big window. The customer orders the exact model and finish from the onscreen menu and a week later the guitar is soup to nuts done ready to pick up. Um.....No

Yeah, I added it here, then I watched it. It turned out to be a lot of commentary that didn't really add much for the amount of time it ran.

Well, if Samson is still around, and if they still own Hartke...... We always had a saying about Samson ( and any brands they own). Q: How do you make the sound system sound better? A: Rip out the Samson products.

Found these two links....

I agree 100%. All the years of building and learning, including people like Dave Brown and Mike Shishkov who are absolute Master Craftsman, along with Todd, who Jol called, his secret weapon ( buffing, final finish, assembly, wiring, setup etc. ). There's Gary Pirro who did the finishes, and who came from the custom show car field. There's Enrico "Frank" Glavash, who was in charge of the wood shop supply, the Millmeister, as Jol called him. There was Tom who was often seen shaping necks, doing fretwork, neck binding filing, and neck/headstock inlays. There was Jaimie doing neck/body joinery and finish prep. There was Mark doing final assembly and setups. "The other Mike" Mike D. - the apprentice, doing body binding, applying wood grain paste, and doing finish sanding. So yeah it was a phenomenal inside look at the Hamer Factory and incredible craftsmen who made it was it was. In management/design/Etc. you had Frank Rindone, Frank Untermeyer, & Jol Dantzig. I'm sure I missed a few people here.

Credit due to Jol Dantzig who had the foresight to document all these C/O builds. I used to watch the Hamer Workshop blog on a daily basis to see what was going on in the shop. What other company can any of us think of that did weekly blogs showing closeup views of current C/O's being built. Sure, many companies would add a few pictures or video on their websites and maybe a walkthrough on YouTube or an occasional gear rundown (Gibson, PRS, MusicMan, Martin, etc.) but where else could you go and see pictures and commentary on Your C/O as it was happening?

Very sad news.

I know KK has health problems, but GT might also have them and isn't touring??

Damn Nice, both of them

^^^ Yep, that one ^^^

I haven't, but there might be a YouTube video of GT where he's showing his guitars. I'll search around. Here's a link with a snapshot of it at the top middle right of the page: https://www.glenntipton.com/guitar-collection.asp

The Nightfire C/O was placed by Moozak at BCR Music.

I'm going to sit back and wait for the final outcome and announcements. Update: After I wrote this, Tortious added a lot of info and links. See his in the thread just below mine for all the info.

It looks like Jackson copied it.

Paging Glenn Tipton....Paging Glenn Tipton Part 3 With Commentary by Jol Dantzig June 30, 2008 Judas Priest in the Workshop ( Commentary By Jol Dantzig / Taken from the Hamer Workshop Blog ) With all the projects that we have going on at any given time, it's hard to spotlight all of them here. After all, we're guitar builders not webmasters. Here's one job that's been in the shop for a while. It's no secret that we've worked closely with the boys in Judas Priest for over two decades; every album and tour since 1984 has bristled with Hamer-tone. Since one of our readers asked, I'm going to jump the gun on a special post series that we've been holding close to our chest. Back in the day... Glenn Tipton and Jol Dantzig in the studio during the recording of Judas Priest's "Turbo" album After talking to Glenn Tipton over the course of a few weeks, and receiving the basic idea for his new guitar, Dave set to work building a mahogany neck with a curly maple fingerboard. We've elected to use the old "six on a side" Hamer headstock shape, because it matches Glenn's other Hamers, and goes more with the feel of this guitar. The scale is 24.75" and it calls for block inlays. We selected some nice chunks of "black" pearl and cut them into rectangles. Here, Tom has routed the pockets for the pearl and is gluing them in. Then, based on the outline provided by Glenn, Mike starts to rough out the body from a mahogany blank. In this photo he's placed the neck over the body to get the cutaway, pickup and bridge locations locked in. We've collected all the parts we need, including a NOS (new old stock) original Kahler from the '80s. Mike will create templates for routing, and then do the pocketing on the pin router. There's a few bumps in the road, but we always figure it out in the end. Stay tuned for more... July 09, 2008 Blending Glenn Tipton's Neck At this point in the build, Mike and I were talking about the positioning of the controls on the body of Glenn Tipton's guitar, and we needed some clarification from the client. Glenn's original plan was for both a volume and a tone control, along with a three-way toggle. The last drawing we had showed only a single volume and a toggle, so we had to make a decision. Rather than guess, I got on the cell and called Glenn on his. Sure enough, the last drawing was correct, so we could proceed with one control hole. I rang off with Glenn and we marked the locations immediately. A few hours later, Mike has cut the neck pocket and fitted the neck to the body of the guitar. He's added the bevels on the body, and now it's time to do the neck blending. The first step is to draw out the blend line on the instrument. The idea here is to provide good hand access, retain the maximum amount of joint for good energy transfer and create a pleasing visual transition. After Mike and I take a couple swipes at it we get a good line, so it's time to park the guitar in a vise and get after it with a pneumatic drum sander. The grit is very coarse, so Mike takes it easy, just hogging off the major real estate. In this photo you can see the wood flying off the sander past Mike's shirt—always wear eye protection! After the sander, Mike does the final smoothing with a file and then with sandpaper. After about an hour, it's looking good. Glenn was stoked about the progress, and said that he was on his way to a photo shoot with his vintage Hamer Phantom GT. At this rate, the guitar will be in the paint booth soon. We'll come back to this project then. August 12, 2008 More Glenn Tipton Guitar Progress A lot has happened with Glenn's guitar in the last few weeks, so we'll try to catch up. We decided to keep the traditional "GT" headstock on this model, and because Glenn wanted bevels on the body we thought that the headstock should echo that too. After Mike sketched the first draft, I put a logo overlay on the headstock to see how the whole thing would look. When we saw the overall effect, I thought that the bevel was too large. It really dominated the headstock as opposed to being a flourish like the ones on the body; so we reduced the mass of the bevel to suit the overall theme. It's important to think of the instrument as a whole rather than a collection of individual design ideas because no matter how much you like them all, if they don't work together the design fails. Satisfied that we'd balanced things out, Mike proceeded with the woodworking using a sander, file and a scraper. Then it's just a matter of prepping for the paint room where we'll pick it up next time. October 03, 2008 Glenn Tipton Guitar Update It has been a while since we've showed any of the Tipton progress, so here's a little update. Glenn wanted an off-white color so Gary sprayed out a white base coat on the guitar first. Then he mixed and shot two slightly shaded variations using our variant system tints. I emailed this exact photo to Glenn on the road to get his feedback. Usually, we send the actual samples to our customers along with a form to sign for approval, but in this case it wasn't practical. We'll have to live with the color shift from the video monitor. Glenn liked the yellower version to the left, so Gary went ahead and sprayed out the guitar. Glenn also suggested that we put a sightly contrasting color on the bevels to make them stand out. I suggested that perhaps we didn't want it to be overtly noticeable, just enough to give the guitar depth under the lights, and he agreed. Gary had the idea to use a little shaded pearl tint powder, so we went with that. I think it's looking good—slightly different for Mr. Tipton, but cool nonetheless. Here's the headstock.

That one was a C/O for Glenn Tipton. See my next post for more info.

It's truly an amazing build. And yes, I noticed that they did it to the f-hole as well, which must have been incredibly tedious and hard to do. It's something you'd expect from the late great John D'Angelico

Did you think of the stacked binding, because I don't think anyone has ever done that before. Must have added serious $$$$ to the C/O.

Mike Shishkov in the Shop Part 2 - Paging Glenn Tipton....Paging Glenn Tipton