The Fastest Top Secret

Sometimes the secret to sweet tone, that holy grial of musicians does not lie upon an expensive piece of equipment but in an unknown, and sometimes unexpensive instrument. Such is my case with my Dano Rumor Bass, Ed O'Brien with his hidden Squier guitar, Joe Satriani with his Kramer piece of crap, and many, many more. And on this list we can see one of the most creative minds in the guitar department, Pat Smear, whom you will remember from the Nirvana's Unplugged Album and from the Foo Fighters, whose taste for clothes was as weird as his taste for guitars; besides his Gibson Barney Kessels he faved a brand that was certainly unknown, obscure and rarely seen, the Swedish based Hagström, that gave him his peculiar tone. And digging more in this brand we'll find out that it was also used by Elvis Presley, Frank Zappa and even Jimi Hendrix (maybe you already knew, I didn't). Well, anyway, Hagstrom was founded in 1958 and ceased operation on 1983, which made this guitars highly desired. Also back in the 70's there was a boom of guitar copies, which were cheap but their sound could be compared to those guitars they were copying, and you could find Ibanez's Les Pauls and all sorts of asian copies, with their consequent lawsuit, and therefore this guitars were a wanted madness, people went mental over them and their tone, also loved by Smear. The Hagstrom legend came back in 2006 with new and old models, all of them cool in shape and sound and finding a new horde of playing fans. The shape of the body in some models is everything but orthodox. I'll realy like them, specially the headstock, for me the headstock shape is most important in the aesthetics of a guitar, is like dating a super fit yet butt-ugly model, is just not right.

Going back to the Hagstrom chat, the nice Hagstrom Super Swede, that gives an air of Les Paulesque style with its singlecut but this fine babe is far from being a Les Paul, for good. 45mm mahogany back with a 10mm (I love metric system) maple veneer. A set mahogany neck, which is claimed to be The fastes neck on planet Earth. Hagstrom big ol' unique tuners 18:1. Hagstrom custom 58 humbuckers. Resinator freatboard. Three-way pickup toggle, two tone knobs, two volume volume, and a mini-toggle coil tap switch. You'll get a super guitar for no more than 600usd. Vintage yet with a modern crunch. These are sugar all the way. Diabetics, restrain yourselves.