Hamer Chaparral Custom USA

I was lucky enough to own this guitar for a few weeks ; not long after, I sol dit !
Specs: asymatric mahogany body, black painting with golden effects as if it had been painted carelessly (a custom painting typical of the late 80s!!), three Seymour Duncan pickups (Trembucker humbucker & Tremstack humbucker in single coil format), Floyd Rose-style “Hamer” tremolo bridge made in Germany by Schaller, a 24-fret maple neck with ebony fretboard and boomerang-shaped moter of pearl inlays (I’d been looking for one like this for ages!), head reminiscent of that of a Gibson Explorer, 1 volume, 1 tone, 1 5-position selector.

The guitar is very well-made, from the screws to the neck and from the head to the boomerang inlays!!
Since it has no maple top to compensate for the heavy, dense sound of mahogany, this guitar offers a very typical sound, heavy and dense.

In clean sound on the main pickup positions, is sounds very midrangy (even a little too much to my taste!!), on the intermediate positions you get the typical sound of a Strat!!
This guitar sounds good for studio takes, but I didn’t like its sound, either too midrangy and heavy with a lack of highs, or too dry and Strat-like.
To me, this guitar didn’t sound balanced enough.
I prefer guitars with a mahogany body and maple top, a construction which provides more balanced sounds in the attacks and a more defined sound.
But to say the truth, I prefer alder which is sonicwise much better balanced than mahogany: no neef to add a maple top, alder sounds naturally balanced!! To get back to this test, the neck is very easy to play – rather thin, and with a very good fretwork.

The electronics’ wiring was well executed. Just look at the picture, I didn’t change a thing!!
This guitar dates back from the 90s and you can see how carefully it was crafted. The wiring and quality of the onboard components (with even “hamer”-stampes pots!!), the carving to rest the neck within the body (even on the Korean-made Slammer model it is very well done!), the boomerang-shaped fretboard inlays, the back protection plates are made of aluminium, the 3-part neck typical of U.S.-made Hamer guitars (2 of the parts go in the same direction with the middle-part going the other way to ensure a perfect stability!!).

After clean sounds, let’s see the distorted ones: fat and rocky. The Trembuckers spread saturated sounds very well, it sounds really fat!!
Even too much!!

All in all, it’s a good guitar, well made with a quality you can’t find nowadays, except on guitars twice that price.
But if I sold it, it’s because it didn’t match my needs!!
I found it lacking sound balance, and for me, that was already too much!!
Otherwise, it remains a legend to me – and one I was lucky enough to own !!