Electric Guitars On eBay

Hamer Guitars started in 1974 in a vintage guitar shop in Wilmette, IL where a group of musicians acquired, restored and sold vintage instruments such as ‘59 Les Pauls, and 50s and 60s Stratocasters. Frustrated with the sound and workmanship of instruments currently manufactured by Gibson and Fender, they decided to take things into their own hands, making what would become the first Hamer guitar - a Flying V bass.

When Jol Dantzig, one of the founders of Hamer, took the unique bass on the road for a string of gigs, people began asking about it and where they could get one. Although none of them had considered building guitars for other people, when fellow Illinois native, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick asked for one, they just couldn’t turn him down. After Rick’s request, orders began to pour in from Mick Ralphs of Bad Company, Martin Barre of Jethro Tull and Andy Powell of Wishbone Ash. “The reaction was incredible,” explained Danzig. “We had ten orders before we even had a name for the company”.

The progression from guitar repair to guitar building was pretty natural and the fledging Hamer Guitar company was on it’s way. Personally, I remember seeing Cheap Trick in Dallas in 1979 (Sweet opened the show - man those guys were good…) and have the vision of Rick playing his checkerboard Explorer imprinted on my brain. Gimmick or not, that was one cool guitar - sounded great too.

In breaking up the Hamer section, I start off with the Hamer Archtop, Hamer Custom (which includes Custom Shop models) and Hamer Diablo. Next is the famous Hamer Explorer and then a special section for a Hamer Goldtop models followed by the Hamer Monaco and Hamer P90 models. The last section is for the budget line models, Hamer Slammer.

Rickenbacker is one of the oldest brand names in the manufacture of electric guitars. The firm is headquartered in Santa Ana, California, and all of its production takes place there. Rickenbacker is the largest guitar company to manufacture all of their guitars within the United States, which is a key factor in their consistently high quality and prices.

Rickenbacker guitars are noted for their distinctive jangle and chime. They are very trebly instruments and, unlike most electric guitars used in rock and roll, are often played cleanly, without distortion. Because of their tone, the guitars are favored by jangle pop, power pop, and British Invasion-style groups. Though there are exceptions, most hard rock, metal, and punk outfits eschew Rickenbacker guitars because they are not as well suited to tougher, grittier sounds as are other guitars; Rickenbacker basses, however, are a staple of the hard rock genre.

One interesting application of a “Rick” is by Joe Walsh of the Eagles, who uses them almost exclusively for slide guitar with a generous touch of distortion - typically through a Dr Z Mazerati amplifier.

For this section, I’ve included the most popular models including the Rickenbacker 360, Rickenbacker 330, Rickenbacker 620 and two section for Rickenbacker basses - the Rickenbacker 4001 and the Rickenbacker 4003. I’ve created two special sections for Rare Rickenbackers and another for Vintage Rickenbacker. Lastly, which will probably irk a few people, I’ve created a section called Rickenbacker Lennon, which includes the 325 Rickenbacker (3/4 guitar with a very flat fret board radius) and the Rickenbacker 350 (also played by Lennon at various points).

I’m in the process of overhauling this site, so I decided to start with some mods to the Music Man Guitar section. First off, the search strings were only keyed for “music man”, which I added “musicman” - this is a very common way to search for these guitars that I had missed in the initial build.

Secondly, I wanted to rope off all the licensed Music Man guitars - the OLP models - into their own section and remove them from the main Music Man section. I don’t know how good these guitars are, but I do see them everywhere.

Lastly, I’ve noticed quite a few more Music Man Albert Lee models for sale lately and I figured it was time to give them their own section as well. I’ve heard great things about this guitar and I’d love to get my hands on one to play - I really like the angular shape and the 3 P90 pickup option. For Music Man amps, vintage of course, be sure to check out www.guitarampinfo.com.

I just got Wordpress installed over here on electricGuitarBay.com after successfully launching my first Wordpress blog over at guitarAmpInfo.com - which has been a lot of fun.  I hoping this will be as fruitful…