Rick Nielsen

Rick Nielsen is the guitarist and songwriter of Cheap Trick, from Rockford, Illinois, and the player most associated with Hamer guitars. The checkerboard finish is his visual signature, and Hamer built him one of its more unusual instruments, a five-neck guitar. He sketched the idea on notebook paper, having stacked up to five guitars during his late-1970s solos, playing one and tossing it away. A first circular, spinning design was dropped because of its weight, and Hamer built the first one in 1981 by laminating the bodies of five double-cutaway Hamer Specials. He asked for a 12-string and a fretless neck, one neck that sounds like a Stratocaster and one like a Junior.

The original orange five-neck was retired in the mid-1990s after the top neck snapped, and replaced by a black-and-white checkerboard version with half-inch checkers. Nielsen has said he owns three Hamer five-necks, and the 1981 original is on loan to museums and has hung in his Chicago restaurant. Before that, Hamer had built other unusual instruments for him, such as the checkerboard Standard, an electric mandocello and a 12-string bass.

His collection has been described as well over 200 guitars. Rockford is building a 62-foot checkerboard Hamer monument in his honor.