The CH-12's active electronics worked well and were wired in the same configuration as the B12L with master volume, blend, bass, and treble controls. Plugging into an Eden WT-400 and D-410XLT cabinet, I found that tone to be quite good with clear, ringing harmonics. Hamer has used generic, passive humbucking pickups in the import instead of the active EMG DCвЂ™s used in the B12L. Coming from a humid country overseas to drier Canada would explain why it needed a neck adjustment. I didn't notice any warping, just too much bow. From sighting the neck, it appeared that the truss rods could use some tweaking to alleviate the excess bow in the neck and bring the action down to a playable level. In addition, I noticed that the action was much, much higher than I have set up on my B12L. The hardware used for the bridge and tailpiece appeared similar to the B12L, but with different adjustment screws used on the bridge. The overall fit and finish of the instrument did not show any obvious flaws in construction. The fingerboard wood looked darker and less rich in grain and color than the fingerboard on my B12L, and while the CH-12 neck felt similar in dimensions to the USA-made model, I think it may have been slightly thicker from front to back. Other reviewers have stated that their CH-12вЂ™s have light bodies so the instrument I tried may have been an exception. Due to the heavy body, I didn't notice as much neck dive as on my B12L but I could see it becoming tiring to play over a whole night. According to the literature, the CH-12 body is supposed to be made of mahogany like the USA model but this particular bass must have been built using a rather dense piece of wood. The first thing I noticed about the CH-12 was that it was particularly heavy, about 12 pounds by my guess (my B12L is less than 10 pounds). This isn't too surprising since the Korean import Hamer bass is essentially a cheaper copy of the American model.

When I picked up the CH-12 it felt very familiar to me, very much like the B12L. For background information, I have owned a USA-made Hamer B12L Chaparral 12-string for five years, the model upon which the CH-12 is patterned.

Recently I had the opportunity to check out the new CH-12 Hamer import-model 12-string bass.

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