Two Guitars, week one:

The folks at Hamer are building me two new guitars for the upcoming No Doubt tour. One is a "Vector" (sometimes referred to as a flying v). The other is a Special Korina.
Both will share the same paint scheme of a transparent Acrtic white, where the grain of the Korina can be readily seen beneath the finish. This color will tie in to the design of the stage-set we're building for the tour.
Both guitars will have transparent white headstocks as well, and the Vector will be fully bound. (You'll get a chance to see how that looks in a few weeks.) The Vector will be outfitted with two Duncan Fatcat pickups, and the Special with to Duncan '59's.
Above here you see the body of the Vector being cut out by hand. And below, both necks are shown in the process of being hand carved. Notice how the wood grain is angled and glued into a "chevron" pattern on both halves of the Vector body. This way the grain runs parallel to the outer edges
of the V's body. Sweet! Click on the photos to "blow them up"!

Hamer "Special Jr." w Humbuckers

Here we go, first post! This modified Hamer Special Jr. was built in 2003 of African Limba wood, also known as "Korina". This hot rod originally came from the shop with a single Duncan P90 pickup. For a change of character I had the Duncan Antiquity humbuckers put in. (I have another Korina Special Jr, almost identical, but built in 2004 with two P90's.) Two pickups just makes for a more versatile, usable guitar for me. Playing No Doubt music, I spend a lot of time in the middle pickup selector position. Note the volume and tone knobs stolen from one of my old MXR stompbox pedals!