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Of all the features, I'd likely have nothing to complain about that 6-way rotary switch: Safe to assume a bridge + neck position is one of them?

I am not sure if I want to like it or not.

other than the trem bar, it looks alot like my schecter

I like it, but it's not a Hagstrom.

ekwatts wrote:I like it, but it's not a Hagstrom.

My feelings exactly.

It sort of reminds me of the new Vox Virage guitars they came out with. Very amazing high end guitars in their own right but nothing in common with vintage models. I guess it's quite hard to say when it comes to a case like this, a company being defunct and brought back to life years later trying to regain stock and credibility in its namesake. If the company never dissolved in the first place, is a guitar like this the natural evolution that would have occurred? Or would Hagstrom be like Fender and Gibson and more/less keep rehashing their designs down to the 3-bolt necks and obscure guild-style tremolo systems or would they have made changes much like this guitar's along the way?

The more I think of it, I think the answer is clear....Just about everything that made a Hagstrom a Hagstrom is more/less lost (aside from the body outlines and H-expander truss rod style and 70's headstock shape). Other old companies seeing a resurgence, like Kay and Harmony for example, I feel are doing a better job of recreating the look, feel and sound of their vintage counterparts while still creating a more durable quality feeling instrument. Then you have Danelectro who is still more/less making their instruments to their own specifications, not much different than Gibson and Fender does for the most part.

as I understand it, Danelectro is a resurrected company too though. they just happen to do a pretty good job matching the originals. not everything is the same though. Will has compared his vintage U2 with his new one and there are differences. arguably about as close as Fender or Gibson do matching their vintage models.

and in a lot of ways you could say Fender is a resurrected company. when Bill Schultz and other employees bought Fender from CBS, the Fullerton factory was not part of the deal. with a few exceptions they got none of the original tooling used to build the vintage instruments. they had to start all over from scratch. that's why for a couple years in the mid 80s almost all the Fender guitars were being made by Fender Japan until the US operation could get up and running.

Just look at Burns; very few of the guitars they make currently can be directly pinned down to older designs. They take the most prominent aspects of those old designs, such as the body shapes, the pickups, the headstocks and the pickguards and combine it all with modern hardware. The result is still obviously a Burns guitar.

The new Hagstroms are very nice guitars, but they're just not right. There isn't enough there.

Mages wrote:as I understand it, Danelectro is a resurrected company too though. they just happen to do a pretty good job matching the originals. not everything is the same though. Will has compared his vintage U2 with his new one and there are differences. arguably about as close as Fender or Gibson do matching their vintage models.

Yeah Dano, Kay, Harmony are all resurrected companies.....But all three of them are more faithful to their originals than say, Eastwood Airlines.....that more/less copy the shape but build the guitar as it is from scratch completely from the neck joint to pickups/electronics, bridge and tailpiece etc.

Fender was a little far gone under CBS by the 80s, but even so, they didn't issue their standard series with set necks and floyd roses. Also think of it as if Gibson started making high end bolt on les pauls.

That said I do think Hagstrom's Viking deluxe models are pretty guitars, but do not want gloppy epiphone finish or set neck.

The day they can release guitars like this brand new exactly like this, I will run out and buy one


But they won't, because they would have to sell it for under $800 to even compete with vintage models which are still cheaper than that usually, and they can make more money selling Epiphones with coat of arms on their Bigsbys

Yes my idea of Hagstroms are the '60s solid body styles too,but the Swedes have been made since the early '70s
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Right, but the thin bolt on necks, the signature double block inlay on the 12th fret, knobs, etc are all gone in place of generic les copy fare.

I've never seen a real hagstrom reissue, but from every picture I've seen and and most reviews I've read, they do not look to be the same quality.

Also, old Hagstrom would have never let this happen:

When I was a kid I wanted an H8 like Noel Redding

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Noel Redding was a really good guitar player as well. He used to busk around Cork City and I saw him a few times. Loved playing Bob Dylan tunes. He was broke, sadly. He was screwed out of his royalties and was planning to sue the Jimi Hendrix estate for around 4 million if I recall.

I can't overstate what nice man he was, totally unpretentious.

I was working up the courage to jam with him when he passed. It's one of my greatest regrets in life that I didn't take him up on his invitation.

I've never played a vintage Hagstom but I have played a bunch of the new ones in shops. They felt like cheap asian made guitars, as opposed to a nice Japanese one. I believe they are made in Korea or China...

Like that headstock design looks the tits on the old models, but when you check out a new one up and close you can tell it's just paper overlay. The machine heads look cool too, until you see the metal stamping on the peg. A friend of mine bought a Harley Benton 335 that and the new Viking played and sounded the same.

The next semi-hollow body I buy will be a hofner verythin


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Nick wrote:I am not sure if I want to like it or not.

Agree . Looks kinda like a rebadged Alden rig with a Hagstrom headstock . However I really dig it .

ultratwin wrote:Of all the features, I'd likely have nothing to complain about that 6-way rotary switch: Safe to assume a bridge + neck position is one of them?

I love the tampon Bigsby. I love new Hagstrom guitars, F-20P is fucking sweet. I know there not the old guitars but fuck it.

New Hagstrom is like a Saab 9-2X. Sure it's a really nice Subaru, but a Saab it ain't, and it's not going to impress enthusiasts who own the real thing.

Just realized it's rare to see many ivory Lester-inspired solidbodies with P90s, and maybe that's part of the nu-gen charm about the thing, although with a near-perfect Strat in the quiver I'd be just fine with a neck/bridge combo like on the Swede SE.

That being said, never mind the prophylactic sticker still on the p'ups, the black one just looks cheeeep for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.

The Hagstrom crest ...



reminds me of...

haha! yeah... That or the Rothmans crest.



It's very cigarettish, one way or another.