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I was looking at some old Shad's photos the other day when i saw one from about 1960-61, the Strat had the letters HBM printed in white just above the strings but i've never seen this anywhere else in any other photo.
It looks like THAT Strat but is it a different model or was it simply removed?
This is probably a minor thing but i just wondered.

The 'letters' are actually a sort of stick-on relief effect in gold which all the Shadows had on their guitars at one time.

When did Jet Harris's initials become HBM?

Pat.

Jet is playing a six string guitar, not Bass......so probably playing Hanks guitar.

Regards,
Baz.

Jet had JH on his bass at one stage..

I always thought it was an understated British way of personalising one's instrument- whereas the US artists had their names in large inlays on the neck of guitar or emblazoned on the scratchplate etc!!

Not brilliant images but you can just make out J H on Jet's Bass - also the cover of the "Shadows To The Fore EP" shows the HBM.

That's right. Jet's stage bass had JH on it. When he left, all they did was peel off the JH and hand the instrument to Licorice. They didn't put LL on it, and indeed I don't think the HBM was there very long either. (All this from memory, which could easily be faulty after all this time!)

Those gold letters could be purchased from Woolworths at that time, we bought some identical ones for our guitars with our own initials. You just removed the backing paper to reveal the sticky side before fitting.

Probably more interesting is what is the 'Chinese' type writing over the Gold Initials.

I asked Hank once and he said he couldn't remember!!

Stuart