With a design reminiscent of a Gibson Les Paul, the Swedish-made Hagstrom Super Swede was introduced circa 1977 and had a production run of just about five years.
Located at the guitar’s output jack, the serial number indicates that this particular Super Swede could be one of the last built in Älvdalen, Sweden.
Hi Zach,
I own a vintage Hagstrom Super Swede
with a serial number of 53 078140.
I’ve played and displayed this guitar in
my home ever since I bought it back in
the mid-’80s. I read that these models
were available in mahogany and maple,
and I think mine has a maple top, but
I’m not sure. It has a beautiful sunburst
finish and I love this guitar—I’m just
hoping to get more information on it
and the company. There are sites for
Hagstrom information out there, but
the Super Swede is not mentioned as
much as the company’s surf-style guitars
that were produced earlier.
Thanks!
Leonard in Vancouver, British
Columbia
Hi Leonard,
Let’s begin with a little history. Albin
Hagström of Älvdalen, Sweden, began his
career selling German accordions, founding
Hagstrom in 1921 and incorporating in
1926. By 1932, the company had established
its own production facility, and in 1936, the
first of many attempts to set up distribution
in America with a sales office in New York
was made. Because of World War II, however,
a U.S. sales office wasn’t actually in place
until 1946, and it only lasted until 1949.
Hagstrom began producing electric guitars in
1958, and at first, these guitars were imported
into the U.S. by the Hershman Musical
Instrument Company in New York, and
labeled under the Goya brand name.
Hagstrom-branded instruments started appearing in the U.S. around 1962, with a fully expanded lineup of guitars and basses showing up by the mid-1960s. Initially, Hagstrom guitars were visibly influenced by the pearloid finish of the accordions the company produced for so many years, but their guitars became more traditional-looking as time progressed. A good example is the James D’Aquisto-designed Hagstrom Jimmy, released in 1969.
With the introduction of their pioneering “H” Expander-Stretcher truss rod, Hagstrom was also known for innovation. This was further evidenced with the Swede Patch 2000—the first guitar with a built-in synthesizer—and the Hagstrom H8, an 8-string bass with four sets of string pairs.
Unlike the many other guitar manufacturers that moved production to Asia in the 1970s, Hagstrom continued to produce their guitars in Sweden. By 1983, however, they could no longer compete with all the Asian-made guitars on the market, so Hagstrom experimented with having a few prototype instruments built in Japan. The quality of the prototypes was not on par with their Swedish-made counterparts, so instead of compromising the Hagstrom brand, the company discontinued guitar operation altogether. Hagstrom continued to build accordions, and still does today. In 2005, the Hagstrom trademark for guitars was revived for a line of guitars built in China, styled mostly after the popular Hagstroms of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, Hagstrom is distributed in the states by U.S. Music Corporation in Buffalo Grove, Illinois.
The Les Paul-influenced Swede was first introduced in 1970, while the higher-end Super Swede (originally called the Swede DeLuxe) was introduced circa 1977. Hagstrom catalogs are quite vague regarding specifications, but the main difference between the two is that the Super Swede boasts a set neck, while the regular Swede has a bolt-on. Another difference between the two is that the Swede has two 3-way switches. Separated by the neck and located in the upper bouts, one is a traditional pickup switch while the other is a 3-way tone switch. The Super Swede is absent of this tone switch, but does have a coil tap mini-switch near the knobs. It also appears that the Super Swedes featured maple tops for select finishes, including golden sunburst, wine red, and tobacco brown. Keep in mind that there are a few different variations of the Swede and Super Swede with different body sizes and pickups/electronics.
According to the serial number, your guitar was the 140th guitar built from batch 078. The “53” appeared before all Hagstrom serial numbers beginning in the early 1970s, simply to help with bookkeeping. I found out that batch 076 was produced around 1980, so it’s possible that your Super Swede could be one of the last produced in Älvdalen. Hagstrom manufactured a total of about 1,500 Super Swedes before the company shut down.
Other nice features of your Super Swede include the ebony fretboard with pearl-block inlays and the pair of humbuckers with individual volume and tone knobs. In excellent condition, your Super Swede is worth between $1,400 and $1,750. According to sources, some Super Swedes were custom finished and have become very collectible. Since the Super Swede was only produced for about five years, it is certainly one of the more rare Hagstrom guitars out there. Definitely a treasure!
Zachary R. Fjestad
is author of Blue Book of
Acoustic Guitars, Blue Book
of Electric Guitars, and Blue
Book of Guitar Amplifiers.
For more information, visit
bluebookinc.com or email
Zach at guitars@bluebookinc.com.
LR Baggs HiFi Duet High-fidelity Pickup and Microphone Mixing System
"When a guitar is “the one,” you know it. It feels right in your hands and delivers the sounds you hear in your head. It becomes your faithful companion, musical soulmate, and muse. It helps you express your artistic vision. We designed the Les Paul Studio to be precisely the type of guitar: the perfect musical companion, the guitar you won’t be able to put down. The one guitar you’ll be able to rely on every time and will find yourself reaching for again and again. For years, the Les Paul Studio has been the choice of countless guitarists who appreciate the combination of the essential Les Paul features–humbucking pickups, a glued-in, set neck, and a mahogany body with a maple cap–at an accessible price and without some of the flashier and more costly cosmetic features of higher-end Les Paul models."
Now, the Les Paul Studio has been reimagined. It features an Ultra-Modern weight-relieved mahogany body, making it lighter and more comfortable to play, no matter how long the gig or jam session runs. The carved, plain maple cap adds brightness and definition to the overall tone and combines perfectly with the warmth and midrange punch from the mahogany body for that legendary Les Paul sound that has been featured on countless hit recordings and on concert stages worldwide. The glued-in mahogany neck provides rock-solid coupling between the neck and body for increased resonance and sustain. The neck features a traditional heel and a fast-playing SlimTaper profile, and it is capped with an abound rosewood fretboard that is equipped with acrylic trapezoid inlays and 22 medium jumbo frets. The 12” fretboard radius makes both rhythm chording and lead string bending equally effortless, andyou’re going to love how this instrument feels in your hands. The Vintage Deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons add to the guitar’s classic visual appeal, and together with the fully adjustable aluminum Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge, lightweight aluminum Stop Bar tailpiece, andGraph Tech® nut, help to keep the tuning stability nice and solid so you can spend more time playing and less time tuning. The Gibson Les Paul Studio is offered in an Ebony, BlueberryBurst, Wine Red, and CherrySunburst gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes and arrives with an included soft-shell guitar case.
It packs a pair of Gibson’s Burstbucker Pro pickups and a three-way pickup selector switch that allows you to use either pickup individually or run them together. Each of the two pickups is wired to its own volume control, so you can blend the sound from the pickups together in any amount you choose. Each volume control is equipped with a push/pull switch for coil tapping, giving you two different sounds from each pickup, and each pickup also has its own individual tone control for even more sonic options. The endless tonal possibilities, exceptional sustain, resonance, and comfortable playability make the Les Paul Studio the one guitar you can rely on for any musical genre or scenario.
For more information, please visit gibson.com.
Introducing the Reimagined Gibson Les Paul Studio - YouTube
Grissom and Paul Reed Smith’s first collaboration appeared in 2007 in the shape of theGrissom DGT—a signature instrument that’s seenmany iterations since. His Custom 30 amplifier followed five years later. But at 30 watts, that amp is pretty powerful for a lot of folks. So, this year PRS and their lead amp designer, Doug Sewell, unveiled the more club-friendly, tremolo-equipped DGT 15.
The basic architecture of the Indonesia-built DGT 15—single-channel, 2 x EL84 power section, 15 watts, and onboard reverb and tremolo—bears more than a little resemblance to a few important ’60s combo amps. But its 3-band EQ with presence, top-cut, and bright boost controls lends a lot of additional functionality and flexibility without cluttering the control panel or the playing experience. And, unlike some classic amps in this power class, the DGT 15 generates its wallop from a pair of output tubes in cathode bias, driven by three 12AX7s and one 12AT7 in the front end.
Feature Length
If the DGT 15’s control set were made up of just the EQ, presence, and top-cut controls, it would offer impressive tone-sculpting power. But the 3-way bright, boost, and master volume switches add exponentially more colors and gain contrasts. The bright switch is clever. It can be switched to always-on mode or set to disengage when the boost is on. The footswitchable boost, meanwhile, gives the single-channel DGT-15 the flex of a two-channel amp with a lead mode. Better still, you can set the amp up so you can activate the boost and master volume together—enabling access to the most headroom with the boost off and keeping the gain from running wild when the boost is engaged. The tremolo, too, can be activated via a mini-toggle or the included footswitch.
“While it’s basically clear, round, and full, depending on where you set the powerful EQ controls, you can reshape those tones into chunky, chiming, or sparkly variations on the clean theme.”Because the DGT-15 is cathode biased, the output tubes require no re-biasing when you change them. But the back panel includes jacks for monitoring bias levels, which is handy for matching tubes or diagnosing possible issues. The back panel is also home to the 5-pin DIN footswitch jack and three speaker outs for various combinations of 4 ohm, 8 ohm, or 16 ohm cabs. Our test unit came with the ported-back PRS DG 1x12 cabinet, which is loaded with one 60-watt Celestion Vintage 30. The DGT 15 head itself is a little bigger than lunchbox-sized (unless you’ve got a particularly hefty appetite). But it’s still an easy load at just 17.25" x 9" x 9.25" and a hair under 20 pounds. The 1x12" cab is relatively compact too, at 24" x 22.18" x 10.5", and weighs 27 pounds.
Tejas Tone!
If you read only the specs for the DGT 15 (or never had the pleasure of playing a Custom 30), you’ll probably expect a British voice. But the DGT 15’s core tonality leans as much toward the 1960s black-panel Fender camp, and it has a ready-to-rumble personality that shines through whether you match it to an ES-355 or a Telecaster.
With Fender single-coils in the mix, non-boosted settings are very clean right up to around 3 o’clock on the volume, where the amp starts to edge into breakup just a little. That’s a lot of clean room to roam. But while it’s basically clear, round, and full, depending on where you set the powerful EQ controls you can reshape those tones into chunky, chiming, or sparkly variations on the clean theme. Humbuckers push the DGT 15 to juicier, crunchier zones much sooner, of course. Even so, the amp remains crisp and taut without going muddy. With both single-coils and humbuckers, the overdrive and saturation generated by the boost avoid the sizzly sounds you hear from many modern lead channels and overdrives. It’s also very dynamic—easing into light distortion when you pick hard, and shedding its aggressive edge when you use a light touch or reduce guitar volume. Overdrive pedals (in this case, a Klon-like Wampler Tumnus Deluxe, Marshall-style Friedman Small Box, and a multi-voiced Tsakalis Six) gel with both the boost and clean modes, too. The reverb and tremolo are superb. The range of both successfully spans subtle and more radical sounds—and between these, a couple of drive pedals, and the Boost function, a gigging guitarist can wrangle a lot of flexibility out of this amp.
The Verdict
Using the single-channel, 2 x EL84/reverb/tremolo architecture as a jumping-off point, the DGT 15 scales new heights of versatility—not just via flexible switching and tone-shaping power, but by melding Vox-y edge with Fender clarity and body at a very accessible price.
Phat Machine
The Phat Machine
The Phat Machine is designed to deliver the tone and responsiveness of a vintage germanium fuzz with improved temperature stability with no weird powering issues. Loaded with both a germanium and a silicon transistor, the Phat Machine offers the warmth and cleanup of a germanium fuzz but with the bite of a silicon pedal. It utilizes classic Volume and Fuzz control knobs, as well as a four-position Thickness control to dial-in any guitar and amp combo. Also included is a Bias trim pot and a Kill switch that allows battery lovers to shut off the battery without pulling the input cord.
Silk Worm Deluxe Overdrive
The Silk Worm Deluxe -- along with its standard Volume/Gain/Tone controls -- has a Bottom trim pot to dial in "just the right amount of thud with no mud at all: it’s felt more than heard." It also offers a Studio/Stage diode switch that allows you to select three levels of compression.
Both pedals offer the following features:
- 9-volt operation via standard DC external supply or internal battery compartment
- True bypass switching with LED indicator
- Pedalboard-friendly top mount jacks
- Rugged, tour-ready construction and super durable powder coated finish
- Made in the USA
Static Effectors’ Street Series pedals carry a street price of $149 each. They are available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Static Effectors online store at www.staticeffectors.com.