Hagstrom Viking Deluxe Jazz Guitar in Natural

by Gig Stig

This is yet another fine guitar from Hagstrom, finished to a high standard with great action and the famous “resinator” fret board is a real pleasure to play. Tone wise there’s nothing at all wrong with the Viking, the HJ-50 hum-buckers can emulate many musical genres and I was able to hop from a George Benson-esque mellow Jazz-come R&B tone to a raunchy blues and on to a full-blooded rock sound.

I would have liked to have seen a little more linear control on the volume pots as once they were tweaked down to number 7 a disproportionate amount of volume and tone were lost. But otherwise this is a very fine guitar, it looks great, plays well and sounds terrific – this really is a great come-back from Hagstrom who could easily and quickly re-establish themselves as a major player in the guitar manufacturing industry.