1964 Hagsrom I!

[lawson-stone]

So I have kept playing around with this guitar. The bridge had the infamous "bore through" problem that made it impossible to adjust upward or downward. I finally hit on a solution but really need to keep at it. The tone still isn't exactly there but I thought I'd post something since this guitar seemed to strike a chord with so many of you guys.

This is what I play these days anytime I'm testing gear, my latest Jimmy Raney solo from Aebersold vol. 20, based on "How About You" but this is the Ralph Patt website's backing track.

A few squeaks, clicks, and other stray noise as I get used to this and still haven't got it set up just right.

[Greentone]

Lawson,

Definitely a Hagstrom I. I love it. Find a way to raise the action a bit. The tone is great.

[lawson-stone]

Lawson,

Definitely a Hagstrom I. I love it. Find a way to raise the action a bit. The tone is great.

It has the dreaded "bored through bridge adjustment screws" problem but I think I"ve found a pretty ingenious fix. I put bushings with a right-angle flair into the post holes of the bridge, and then set the bridge onto the adjustment screws so that they bear on the bushings without cutting into the wood. I think this is going to work!

[GNAPPI]

A player in a band in "the next town" had a baby blue Hagstrom and a Reverb Rocket amp when I was playing a Zim Gar and a bandmaster.

Gads I LOVED his sound. So the first "good" git I bought was... A strat and always wanted a Hagstrom but couldn't find one as easy as I could the strat.

Have fun with it!

[lawson-stone]

A player in a band in "the next town" had a baby blue Hagstrom and a Reverb Rocket amp when I was playing a Zim Gar and a bandmaster.

Gads I LOVED his sound. So the first "good" git I bought was... A strat and always wanted a Hagstrom but couldn't find one as easy as I could the strat.

Have fun with it!

I am having fun! First of all, I have almost zero experience with single-coil pickups. Then I'm accustomed to archtop "Gibson" necks, TIJS12s, and humbuckers... so playing this thing is a total trip. I am still trying to figure out what that pickup next to the bridge is for, maybe to keep the strings from falling in.

This guitar is a trip. It does not have a tone knob, it has a TONE SWITCH. Yes, tone is "on" or "off." I call it the Joe Pass and Jim Hall settings. Then again, I've had tone pots with weird tapers that were pretty much "On" or "Off."

I'm told the pickups are midway between P90's and Strat pickups, whatever that means.

[lawson-stone]

So I have this guitar better set up now, and discovered that it LOVES my Polytone amps!

So I did the same solo again, but with the better setup (still some work to do) and with the Polytone Baby-Brute, mic'ing the cab with an SM57.

[oldane]

Hagström guitars were well known here in Denmark which is the neighbour country to Sweden where they were made back then. We even had a dedicated Hagström shop in Copenhagen in the 1960s and 70s. BTW Levin (Swedish too by then) was also frequently seen. During the 1960s the major instrument shops had at least two or three Levin archtops hanging on their walls at any time. I was especially fond of a beautiful blonde one but couldn't afford it as I was only a teenager. However, it is safe to say that my affection of blonde archtops was founded by that instrument.

[ronjazz]

My Hagstrom was an arch-top with an oval sound hole like a Howard Roberts. It had a nice wide fingerboard so I took it to Boston's best luthier at the time and had it made into a 7-string; he widened the fingerboard by adding binding, installed a tuning machine in the "Gumby" extension on the headstock, then made a nut and recut the tailpiece and bridge. I kept the original pickup once I heard it, it sounded really good, and I played hundreds of gigs until it basically fell apart. Really nice guitar for around $600 brand-new, as I recall.