In mint condition! This is a pre-owned guitar with original gig bag. Sold new by us in 2023.
The Hagstrom Alvar is the compact brother of the iconic Viking. Specification technically the Alvar has much in common with an ES339; center-block maple hollowbody, set maple neck, 24.75 scale, two humbuckers (Hagstrom HJ-50 Alnico-5) and a fixed bridge (with beautiful H-logo tailpiece). This makes the Alvar sound a bit more direct and brighter in relation to the larger Viking and gives it a more forgiving sound character for those who want to rock out with a semi-hollowbody as well. And like that Viking, the Alvar is perhaps the best, small-sized semi-hollowbody in its class in terms of quality and finish. Indeed, Swedish Hagstrom is anything but stuck in "the glories of the past," and you'll find all sorts of clever, modern specifications with the guitars that guarantee an unprecedented price-to-quality ratio. Not to mention the fact that Hagstrom builds beautiful instruments! Production takes place in Korea, but completely in-house in Hagstrom's own factory and with its own supervision.
For the development of the necks, Hagstrom went to the drawing board again; in fact, the maple neck has a "Resinator" fingerboard. This is a composite wood that has sound and color technically all the properties of ebony (what we usually find on more luxurious guitars) but offers superior density, uniformity and, above all, stability. In addition, each Hagstrom has the unique "H-Expander" trussrod; an H-shaped neck pin that is extremely stiff but also very light. Hagstrom has well understood that the bottleneck for guitars in a price range under 1000 EU is often the neck. Instability leads to lapses in playing comfort and regular tuning or, at worst, protruding frets due to a shrinking fingerboard. None of this with a Hagstrom! Then that finish. Because with beautiful design details in the in-house developed hardware that are both aesthetically and technically well thought out as well as for example the flawless bindings, Hagstrom really performs above level!
