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I'd go for an Axl guitars Bulldog type thing, but oversized, and humbucker oriented so: Flat top Monaco singlecut, all Mahogany, maybe slightly thinner body, PRS-style stoptail bridge (i.e intonated) Pickups either: 1 bridge humbucker, or bridge humbucker with neck p90. Finish: black with cream/white accents (binding, pickup surounds, pickguard if applicable?), or brown stain with black accents, or goldtop with cream accents - all non-glossy, satin or matt finish. It would look like something someone like Josh Homme would play.

Now if that had a reverse headstock ....

Microwaves are 50 to 70% more efficient than conventional electric ovens for reheating small things. For big things you are better off using the electric oven (which is kind of pointless advice since big things don't fit in small microwaves anyway). The difference is that microwaves heat only the food by making the water molecules super excited. Conventional ovens heat the air and the metal and the food and the room and whatever else while they are at it. On the stove top you have to factor in whether the element and pot size match, etc. aswell. The other advice is use your microwave in summer to keep the room cool, and your big oven in winter to keep the room warm. But anyway they say you don't save much from cooking appliance efficiency - better off focusing on lighting and household heating etc. And of course food is way better using conventional ovens...

Music demands an emotional response and it is hard to get turned on by a robot no matter how hairy he is. What I like about the Valduriez solo is how raw and exciting it is after the pedestrian intro, and when she bends that note four times and hits a different pinch harmonic each time it is super cool. With the dude I watched and, though impressed, only thought about technical issues the whole time - like: 'hmm I wish my left-right hand coordination was that good', and 'the economy of movement is quite something to behold' - but never once did I feel a shiver or a quiver.

Yes - there is video series where he talks about the rig he used, and plays the exact guitar through the exact amp: http://www.mr335.tv/index.html?channel=steely&videofile=mr335/steely/steelyrig

Which was played through a tweed Fender deluxe...

Thanks for the critique guys. I pretty much agree with you except to say that I think the poor marketing, unpopular models, and custom order eccentricity are reasons for the decline (or lack of ability to grow) rather than closure per se - in other circumstances they might be survivable in that the company would just become smaller and tick along at a few hundred US guitars a year, propped up by the import line. Maybe that is wishful thinking. This thread is obviously getting acrimonious and I don't want to contribute to that, but .... if you will forgive me one more graph!? I think this is kind of interesting. I have done a rough estimate of production numbers from the serial number database and graphed them by year, with a few key events in the history of Hamer marked on. My estimates are poor towards the end because here I had to turn to serial numbers from other sources. The line wiggles each year as the company reacted to the market (i.e. each year predicting demand, then correcting the next year etc). My question is what the hell happened in 95-96? I assume this was due to the Strat and Tele copies, and the Mirage and Eclipse? There is a bit of bounce back as they move to New Hartford but ...well. Jeesus, I better go do some real work today!

Yes, absolutely fuck FMIC. I doubt there was ever any intention whatsoever to preserve the Hamer USA brand. My guess is they bought KMC in 2007 primarily for the New Hartford factory and, more specifically, its acoustic guitar manufacturing capability - to provide a home for Guild. They paid $120 million for KMC and you can be certain that very little of this value was in Hamer USA who were producing 650 electric guitars a year (the Fender Corona factory alone can make 350 guitars per day! Hamer's production size is meaningless in a company of that scale). Guild acoustic is a big heritage brand, and demand was/is growing. Fender wanted it to compete against other high quality acoustic guitars e.g. Taylor, Martin. They conducted a review to find a home for production of the brand, and decided to move Guild to New Hartford in 2008. They made room to do so by cutting down on Ovation (some older models sent to Korea for production). Then in 2009 as Guild settled in and demand grew (with increased quality) they killed production model Hamers in order to use the workforce to make Guilds. They let those guys do a bit of Hamer custom orders on the side as a sop. The economic downturn in 2008/09 no doubt was also a factor in shutting down Hamer - electric guitar sales in that price bracket dropped 30% in 2009, and hollowbody electric sales dropped over 60%. But really, what it was is that Fender had a better use for the production facility, and retrospectively their intention is plain to see. Personally I think Hamer pre-Fender was probably doing pretty well for their size, probably not making much money, but unlikely to have been losing any. They didn't fold because of poor marketing, unwanted guitars, or because they refused to make your custom order. Twas the Beast that killed Beauty.

Someone on Facebook asked Jol what he thought of the news. He replied: "There are those who believe that products are like a sports franchise, and that even though the players are traded and hired and fired it remains the same entity. I don’t. For me, the dream ended quite a while ago, and now the denial has finally caught up with the reality. I was devastated when the decision was made quite a few years back, so any announcement just seems like picking up an old newspaper. It hurts, but not as much as it did at first. As for the torch bearers of the brand, we have all moved on and are all doing what we’ve always done. For me, that means making the guitars. I think that’s telling. Thanks for caring about something so dear to me."

All the classics are cool, but lately I have been getting off on newer, possibly more alternative stuff, especially if there are big riffs!

Very Na'vi. You should use it as your Avatar.

Jimmy Page on In The Evening. Dumping the strings on a strat. But yeah Adrain Belew "born under punches" solo

Unfortunately for Kevin his backyard rendition was the 666th cover version of 'Hallelujah'.

When I looked at Jol's site a few days ago it had a different header image - which I think some of you guys might appreciate! Fortunately Google has a cached version you can check out. And yes that is genuine! As for the asking price, I kind of thought of Ken Parker who sold his company in 2003 and now makes archtops for around $30,000. Of course Parker's guitars appear to be amazing, innovative, works of art. If Dantzig is going to be building variations of Monacos and Teles with nice paint jobs, then the price is steep. If he does something truly wondrous, then ok. But chances are ... Well that was a random first post. Perhaps I'd better do a proper intro one.