I didn't know that SWR had gone under. One of the best bass amps that I ever owned was an SWR Workingman 10 bass amp. They are still using it at my church as a keyboard amp and it works well today. Its 10 years old if it is a day. They made excellent amps, so much so that one wonders why they went under.
Once Fender got them they probably realized they had too much redundancy in bass amps and that they were competing with themselves, so they axed the brand. That's what they did with Sunn; morphed their products into a Fender Pro Audio line and killed the Sunn brand.
I think Fender is really missing an opportunity with Hamer, though, as Hamer has always done well what Fender has failed at: producing a line of quality dual humbucker set-neck guitars.
Try as they might to broaden their appeal, Fender is still primarily a single coil bolt-neck guitar company. Putting humbuckers into Strats and Teles and Jags, etc...doesn't make them competitive with Les Pauls and SGs and Explorers and so on. Fender could aim Hamer upscale, like they used to be, and make them equal to PRS.
But it looks like they won't and Hamer will fade away.
