WE ALL KNOW about Hamer, makers of American guitars for the stars (and others), but... Steve Stevens? Well, Tom Bailey of the Thompson Twins described him in November's OTT as the only "heavy" guitarist he could get on with: "Steve's a nice guy: he listens, he sits, he considers, he's very sensitive." Even if he is best known for playing with Billy Idol.

SIT, CONSIDER...

Apart from the price of the dollar, what makes a guitar worth £823? Could it be the purple gloss finish, which coats this guitar from head to strap button, the lush deep colour with an almost (but not quite) perfect finish?

Unlikely, because if you are a finish fetishist, you won't like the pits in which the two single coil pickups reside, rounded triangular holes painted with shiny black screening fluids (all right, paint) — ugly, even if they do impart a certain semblance of hot-wired customisation to your £800 plank-with-strings.

Is it the hardware? Hamer machine heads, and the most violent tremolo since Genghis Khan, here going by the name "Floyd Rose"?

The spring driven thing floats from two mounting posts on the top of the body, and is tensioned via a block and reverse-mounted springs in the back of the body à la old Stratocaster system: when fully slackened, it is possible to pull the bass E half way around the back of the neck at the 12th fret.

This, in itself, is a bloody silly thing to do, but it gives you an idea of the wangability available.

It's not all roses (ahem) down at the bridge, though. While Floyd gives fine-tuners, and a finely tuneable tremolo arm angle, the strings are not individually height adjustable, and the chrome finish is speckled and pitted. It can't be that which gives this guitar its financial status.

Maybe it's those pickups, two spindly single coils and a properly mounted humbucker. It's not normal for the polepieces of magnets to protrude beneath the windings, but here they seem to be double the size of the coils themselves, as we can see under the strange Meccano-esque mountings. Maybe it is the pickups, as they certainly deliver plenty of warm enthusiastic 'merican power — there's no difference in volume between single coil and humbucker.

It's not likely to be the electrics attached to the pickups, though. Two big black plastic knobs give overall control over volume and tone, while one two-way and one three-way selector switch give the player a brainstorm.

Work this one out: with the two-way down, the three-way selects between front (switch up), front and back (switch central), middle and back (switch down); with the two-way up, the three-way gives a choice between front only (switch up), front and middle (switch central), and middle and coil-tapped humbucker (switch down). Phew. We'll come to the noise they all make in a moment.

Are you paying for the neck? Twenty-two fretsworth of rosewood fingerboard with a suspected 12in radius (ie flat)?

You might pay a lot for this neck, but then you'd realise you'd made a mistake, and that the B-string was set too low and made a noise like a sitar as it passed over the first three frets. Then you'd look at this whizzy looking nut, examine the Allen key bolts in the back of the neck and think ah, it's an adjustable nut just like those new Fenders. But it isn't.

Admittedly the Hamer SS had a lower action than any other review guitar I've ever seen, but it still buzzed down at the bottom end (hence complaints about string height adjustment). But the hardware on the new Fenders is setting a very high standard of guitarist friendliness, which everyone else now has to compete with. And this slippery locknut and bridge don't.

You could be paying for the satisfyingly rounded and contoured shape of the guitar, but £800 for a fat Gibson Melody Maker-styled toy is a little exorbitant, even if the glued neck joint is rockin' solid where it meets the body at the 21st fat round fret.

So what are you being asked to shell out for?

...LISTEN...

It must be the sound. £823 worth of noise. Plug it in and listen. Warmer than a Strat; better sustain, much better sustain — notes that hang on in there for ages. Fat and loud humbucking sounds from the back pickup, broader even than most Les Pauls. Mmm, nice. Out-of phase type settings with more frequencies than most Strats have hot dinners — an odd feeling to be playing with that Fender sound, and yet still have the muscle and balls of a Gibson behind it.

It's a comfortable and positive guitar to play, with both brightness and strength. The neck (with certain dishonourable areas excepted) encourages fast fingerwork and across the neck picking, another unusual but useful trait. Its wide flat profile is slim enough for my porkies, even encouraging the thumb to take positional liberties it might otherwise shy away from on a more challenging guitar.

Once you get past the peculiarity of the pickup selection, the Hamer will deliver a wide range of almost everything a rock guitarist might want to wrap the amplifier around. Maybe it's Steve Stevens' contribution, but the SS has a definite character (and not just because of its faults) that convinces me it makes a valuable contribution to road safety. (Or something like that.)

But does the concept of "valuable" stretch to £823 ackers?

...AND BE VERY SENSITIVE.

For that kind of money, you're entitled to expect an instrument with nothing wrong with it. This Hamer Steve Stevens is a potentially great guitar that isn't sorted out yet. Which is bad. (I know, because I've reviewed a Manson Falcon, which performed perfectly and was faultless in almost every way.)

But Hamer must be doing something right: a guitarist was recently spotted selling his '58 Les Paul Custom in a London shop. When questioned on his reasons for flogging the fine old beast, he muttered words to the effect of 'I want to buy another Hamer'. Fair enough.

Hamer Steve Stevens £823

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