Hagstrom HJ500 Semi-Solid Guitar Natural Finish
A relative newcomer to the Nevada Music Warehouse is the newly re-launched range of Hagstrom guitars. These were popular back in the 70’s and early 1980’s until prohibitive manufacturing costs forced a closure of the factory in 1983.
Thereafter Hagstrom became a much sought after instrument and were cherished by collectors and guitar lovers alike. The brand has now been re-launched and are now made in a brand new state of the art factory in China which has helped to reduce the retail cost to enable the brand to compete in today’s modern market.
The HJ500 is a semi-solid wide bodied guitar that will appeal to jazz, rhythm & blues and Rockabilly guitar players. This is a very elegant guitar and the body is made from contoured Canadian Maple with a Canadian Hard Maple neck. The famous resonator fret board is essentially a wood composite material that has qualities that make it more stable than any standard wood product and eliminates wolf tones and hot spots. Sound wise it is comparable to high quality Ebony – but obviously without the problems or the cost associated with Ebony.
It also uses the famous H-Expander truss rod that allows for a very thin neck and a very low action. It runs the entire length of the neck and is a rigid yet lightweight alloy truss rod that resembles a letter “H” but turned over onto its side. The pick-ups are the Hagstrom HJ-50 Hum-buckers and have chrome covers set into black plastic housings and are managed via two tone and volume controls – one set per pick-up, whilst on the lower shoulder of the guitar is a 3 way toggle switch for pick-up selection.
At the base of the guitar is a very beautiful Ebony “Jimmy” bridge with an ornate Hagstrom Trapeze tailpiece, the HJ500 also features two “f” style sound holes on the left and right hand side of the main body. Adjacent to the pick-ups is an attractive Tortoise shell floating scratch plate and the Resonator neck has Pearl Block fret position markers. The review model was in a Natural wood finish however this model is also available in Cherry Sunburst and Black Gloss.