Are Hamer doing any marketing now what so ever? Or is Fender relying on word of mouth, or that old fans of the brand will buy? That is a very dangerous route to go, the brand will decline more and more if they don't do any marketing to attract new customers. Fender should try to reposition the brand. It can be done and I am pretty sure Fender has a very professional marketing deptartment that can create a great long term "how to reposition" plan. They should track down a few, exclusive number of interesting talented artists/guitarplayers to work with so that the guitars are visible on stage. They should target their interest groups and work hard to rebuild the brand within those groups. Fender did re-build Gretsch as a brand. And they re-launched Charvel with a strong filosophy for the brand - with good results results as far as I can tell. why can't they do the same with Hamer? They just seem so very un-interested in Hamer it is scary. If they don't care about the brand then sell it. I am sure Hamer would do better as a small custom shop if they were independent. If worse come to worse give the damn brand back to Jol and he can build them himself, at least he is marketing his new brand while Hamer does nothing except for the blog, (as far as I can see from here in Europe). Doe Well said +1 It makes me so mad :angry: