Hamer no more?

I know there a quite a few admirers of the Hamer brand on this forum. Just reading my last issue on Vintage Guitar Magazine and saw a blurb that Fender has announced it is no longer producing that brand. How about that? And that is after FMIC has nixed the Tacoma brand already a couple of years ago. Who says bigger is better? Dang ...

- Jos

Fender wanted to go IPO. Is that correct? Could they be having $ problems. Did the article say anything about selling it to another company?

fender stopped the ipo, because of very poor projections as far as i know. i love hamer guitars, this is sad.

fender stopped the ipo, because of very poor projections as far as i know. i love hamer guitars, this is sad.

Agreed Louis... my Hamer is one of my best players, and one of my best looking...

Sadly, yes. It seems Hamer's been in a sort of limbo since Fender acquired Kaman anyway. I have an Artist Studio I bought pretty well used, but I'm only now beginning to really appreciate how great the guitar is. I almost feel like I'm cheating when I play it.


As for Fender's IPO, yes, it was stopped. From what I read it was a combination of the market at the time, the reaction to Fender's debt from all its acquisitions and questions on growth. Mainly, I recall that Fender wanted the IPO to get a handle on its debt but felt the valuation at the time wasn't high enough to warrant going through with it. (I remember Guitar Center's debt following the Bain leveraged buyout being a concern, as well, as a pretty hefty percentage of Fender's products are sold to that retailer).

That sucks!

I had a Hamer Studio that I sold and almost instantly regretted it. I do not NEED one, however always assumed I'd get another Hamer (or multiples). I may end up with a nice used one down the road, however it was always one of those things I wanted to do. Maybe/probably another Studio, the old Californians looked interesting for nice "shredders" (big single-coil-in-the-neck fan and I'm not particularly a fan of single-coil-in-the-bridge on Strats/Super-Strats), the Talladega represents a whole lot of what my "dream guitar" would have, the Newport was always an interesting design for semi-hollows, and the Artist always got great reviews. I also LOVED the feel and build quality of the Studio I had. Not to mention the sound.

I also really liked the history of the company, and the fact the people involved seemed to really give two craps about more than just being a business. They projected that, and had a reputation for putting out a really quality product. I cringed when I heard Fender bought them. They were never an uber-popular brand and things seemed to take a turn when they went from being a quality American guitar company to custom-only shop with cheap Asian knock-offs filling the Epiphone/Squire niche in what I am presuming was Fender's marketing scheme for them. It cheapened the brand overall while making the American-made Hamers virtually unattainable to most of us.

This is still sad. This is (was) one of my favorite manufacturers. I still hope/plan to get some Hamers down the road, however this just seemed like a great smaller-type company I could really sort of buy into. There was a fondness for Hamer I do not really have for many other brands. Heritage and G&L, a handful of smaller guitar builders, but to me your big G and F builders are so corporate and distant that even if I like the product, it never seemed as personal or special. It is just sad to see such a quality American guitar company get dissolved. Maybe at some point it can be resurrected and done right, or some other small company can come and fill the void.

-Cheers