Hamiltone Custom Guitar Workshop

Custom built guitars played by the Pro's
Neck thru construction
Bolt on necks on the drawing board

The original custom built Hamiltone^TM made for Stevie Ray Vaughan

"The new one with my name on the fretboard, I call Main, for main guitar. It's a Hamiltone^TM. It's basically Strat-shaped but a little thicker, and the construction of the neck is pretty much like a [Gibson] Super 400, except it goes all the way through the body. So the vibrato is on the neck, basically-dead center right there. You can pop the low E string, and the whole guitar has this reverb you can hear even without an amp, because of the springs being in the neck. It's got an ebony fretboard that's the same width as my beat-up '59, and then they added binding on the outside of that, because I have big hands and I always play barre chords with my thumb wrapped around. What happens a lot of times is my thumb will end up pushing the low E string accidentally. So the wider neck keeps me from doing that. The pickups in there now are EMGs with a little computer chip preamp in them, so there's a battery in the guitar, of course. I like it a lot. They say that the battery will last six months, but I can hear it going down-you can hear it in the tone; it gets fuzzier, like it's straining. When it's got a brand new battery in there, it sounds clear as a bell, and smooth. It'll sing to you."

Excerpt from Guitar Player magazine, October '84 issue.