One thing led to another and in ’73 Dantzig and Hamer opened a music store called Northern Prairie Music in the northwestern suburb of Wilmette, Illinois.

Through a friend, guitarist Gary Gant, Dantzig met another guitar player named Paul Hamer, and the two struck up a friendship. Circa 1970, Dantzig was playing bass in a club band called Heartbreaker. The beginnings of Hamer Guitars (pronounced Hay’-mer, not hammer) go back to those heady days of the early ’70s, when Chicago was the breeding ground of soon-to-be-famous rock bands such as REO Speedwagon, Styx, and Cheap Trick. High-end or budget, there’s no doubt Hamer Guitars have been successful and earned the allegiance of players and collectors alike. The irony was that to everyone else, we were this upstart company selling guitars for twice the amount of the most expensive Gibsons at the time! So our perspective has always been a little skewed.” We thought we could make guitars just as good and sell them for a third of that price. We were seeing vintage ’50s Les Pauls selling for $3,000.

When we created Hamer, we created the high-end boutique guitar category, but we didn’t intend it that way.

“We didn’t quite get it,” explains company cofounder Jol Dantzig, discussing the birth of Hamer Guitars.

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