The Hamer Story
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.