Well, we near the end of the long tale of Hamer USA Guitars, a saga that began in. Beginning in late 1987 serial numbers were again stamped into the wood. Date Your Hamer. This system would have at least a 5 digit number with a space between the first and second digit example 2 2047 This would be a 1982 guitar the 2,047th guitar ever built not including the 680 custom guitars that used the original serial number system Some.
I'm looking for a good, solid bass guitar for our church praise team and am looking to keep it under $900. I know there are Fender Jazz, Precision, etc.but I've come across a Hamer Cruise that I can pickup for around $650, and having owned a few USA Hamer guitars, I know that their quality is everybit as good as any USA Gibson or Fender, so I am assuming the same thing applies to these USA basses by Hamer. Anyone owned/played one, and care to comment? UPDATE (12/21/12): Just got the Cruise Bass today.check page 2 of the thread for pics! There are actually different types of cruise basses.
In the early 80's they were set neck, all mahogany with PJ pickups and a Schaller roller bridge. I think these started dimarzio, but they eventually went to EMG's. These have sharp horns on an offset double cutaway body with beveled edges. Really cool bass.
I think Sting used to use one. They did make a 5 string at some point. The more recent ones are basically Jazz basses. The best ones have the 2Tek bridge. Fantastic basses for the J bass sound.
Every one I have played was built tight and sounded great.
Hamer Serial Numbers GUITARS AND BASSES OF HAMER U.S.A. 1975 -2008 The guitars and basses described in these pages are those which have been produced by Hamer U.S.A. Since 1974 and up to the present date. Obviously Hamer also made many one-of-a-kind custom instruments; the hardware and style of production instruments may be different on Special Order instruments. It also does not include specially ordered instruments that were not generally available.
Therefore the list is not exhaustive. The dates are also approximate due to the reasons given above and several models may not appear in catalogues.
It should be remembered that Hamer built instruments to order, so many models were still technically available after they had been deleted from the official catalogue. Some pictures are shown in the text, but most can be found by following the links to other pages. A Note on Hamer Serial Numbers In 1974 Hamer used a four digit number stamped into the wood starting with guitar #0000 and, until the launch of the Sunburst, this system was used on all guitars. Some instruments (notably Standard guitars and basses, Eight-string basses and some custom order instruments) were numbered using the four digit numbering system up until 1985 (e.g Standard #0722 was completed in May 1984); in total about 750 instruments were numbered using these four digit numbers. The Sunbursts were numbered using a different system: the first digit represents the year of production and the following four (or later five digit number) is the total number of guitars made by Hamer and numbered using this system. So for example guitar #8 0196 was made in 1978 and was the 196th guitar to be numbered using this system.
Similarly # 8 21416 was made in 1988 and was the 21416th guitar to be numbered. These numbers are printed using ink or paint (black on most but yellow on black and dark coloured instruments). By 1980 most models with the exceptions noted above were numbered using this latter system. From late 1987 the serial numbers were stamped into the wood rather than printed. Recently, USA has been stamped under the serial number in the same font.
Just to complicate matters, many one-of-a-kind and prototype instruments have numbers that do not relate to either of the above systems.