About the Maker:
Hamer is an American guitar manufacturer of electric guitars founded in 1973 by vintage guitar shop owners, Jol Dantzig and his business partner Paul Hamer. They are generally considered having created the 'boutique' guitar business in hand building for many artists their professional guitars. The technical director was Jol Dantzig, who is still active today in building custom shop guitars. (http://www.dantzig.com). Today Hamer is owned by Fender.
About the guitar:
It's major distinctive feature is that it has three inter-changable magnetic fingerboards - regular fretted, modal fretted, and fretless. Andy Summers of Police collaborated with Jol Dantzig on several Hamer designs including the Phantom and the original Prototype model. Jol Danzig and Hamer built this guitar back in 1983 and it's major distinctive feature is that it has three inter-changable magnetic fingerboards - regular fretted, modal fretted, and fretless. Similar interchangeable fretboards could be found especially on bass guitars during the '80 (Alembic, ...). The fingerboard system produced by Novatone could be purchase separately and fitted to any guitar.
Jol Dantzig about the guitar on a blog (http://guitarz.blogspot.com/2009/03/andy-summers-one-off-hamer-phantom.html):
Wow, totally forgot about that one! It sees like for thirty+ years, every other week we've been doing something unusual so sometimes memories get lost. That was indeed Andy Summer's guitar.
Don't worry about the fingerboard coming off, the magnetic pull is immense.
I'll have to do a post on our blog about the triple-coil pickups I designed back in the late '70s and used on this guitar and others. No, it wasn't the Mighty Mite "Motherbucker" that thing never worked!
The Phantom A5 guitar was similar to the Prototype II except for a more extended upper-cutaway horn and a contoured body with offset waists. Otherwise, the mahogany construction, the traditional Hamer three-a-side headstock as well a scratch-plate to hide the neck joint and the mahogany neck and electronics were very similar, with a three-coil/single-coil combination. If the same triple coil pickup was fitted, a second scratch-plate mounted single coil was added. Switching allowed the following combinations : the first switch selects either the triple coil (down position), the scratch-plate-mounted single coil (up), or both together (middle); the second lower switch selected either the hum-bucker (down) or the single coil pickup in the triple coil (up). This gives most pickup combination except all three pickups together or both pickups of triple coil together. Controls were completed by a master tone and volume.
For the particulars, this amazing guitar includes these features:
- Body: Mahogany
- Top: Highly figured maple.
- Finish: Black
- Neck: Set mahogany
- Pickups: 1 humbucker and 2 single coil DiMarzio.
Frets: three inter-changeable magnetic fingerboards - regular fretted, modal fretted, and fretless
