Teutonic Musical Backwaters

[Happy Jack]

A brief foray into Economic History: The second world war left the UK and Europe heavily in debt to the USA, and much of Europe destroyed and bankrupt. To stop the debt getting any bigger, most countries introduced very heavy Import Taxes which made US products far more expensive and deterred consumers from buying them.

A brief foray into Musical History: The main centre of gravity for musical instruments in Europe has always been the region to the north of the Alps, the areas known as Bavaria and Bohemia. Just in the area around Ingolstadt were Hofner, Hopf, Hoyer, Framus and Klira, all producing craftsman-made guitars and other instruments.

A brief foray into Social History: When films like [i]Rock Around The Clock[/i] and [i]The Girl Can’t Help It[/i] arrived over here, teenagers saw people playing Fender basses. They wanted them, but high import taxes made them horribly expensive, so they had to settle for European instruments instead. This remained the case until the mid-60’s when reduced import taxes and the obsession with street cred drove the stampede to buy Fenders.

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The up-shot of all this is that most of the European instrument makers are either long-gone or are a shadow of their former selves, and all of them have been left with the reputation of being “cheap guitars”.

This is quite bizarre, when you think that Leo Fender’s main contribution was to work out how to mass-produce a cheap, basic, solid-body guitar while the Europeans were still creating handmade instruments from quality wood.

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Hofner’s hey-day was the period from 1956-66. Their range of basses was very limited at first, being
- the 500/1, hollow-body violin bass
- the 500/5, 2-pickup single-cut semi-acoustic
- the 500/3, single pickup version of the 500/5.

The 500/1 wasn’t even available in the UK since the main importers – Selmer – saw no demand for it. All three basses were short-scale, usually around 30.5”, and were of course fitted with flats since roundwound strings had yet to be developed.

In 1959 there was a minor Liverpool pop group, sometimes called The Beatles (the name varied). They needed a bass player. A friend of John Lennon’s was an artist called Stuart Sutcliffe. He sold a painting for just the right amount to buy a 500/5, so Sutcliffe became their bass player for their first trip to Hamburg.

By their second trip Sutcliffe wanted out, so Paul McCartney agreed to play bass instead of guitar. Being a lefty he didn’t like playing Sutcliffe’s 500/5 upside down, and in Germany Hofners were cheap, so he bought a 500/1 violin bass because it looked the same whichever way you played it.

The rest, as they say, is history.

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On the back of the publicity they got from their association with The Beatles (not just the basses, both Lennon and Harrison also had Hofner guitars for a while), Hofner were able to extend their range of basses. They introduced
- the 500/2, hollow-body Les Paul shape
- the 500/7, 2-pickup double-cut semi-acoustic with a very thin body
- the 500/10, 2-pickup single-cut 6-string semi-acoustic

With the “Beat Boom” in full swing, Hofner also decided to introduce some solid-body basses, also short-scale, these being
- the 182, like a P-bass
- the 185, like a J-bass

The 500/10 didn’t last long in the catalogue and problems with the manufacture of the 500/7 meant that it was soon replaced by the 500/6, the only Hofner semi-acoustic to have a bolt-on neck.

On the subject of necks, all Hofner set-necks in the 60’s were glued using traditional animal-based glue with a tapered mortice joint. The result of this is that, as the glue dries out over time, the neck gently pulls out of its socket and eventually falls off.

For years everyone knew that Hofner necks “broke” and that helped to keep vintage prices down. Actually, all that is needed is to have the neck re-glued by someone who knows what he’s doing, and the neck will be fine for another 30 years.

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The Germans like model numbers (think BMW) but the Brits like names. The UK importer, Selmer, made some fairly minor changes to the Hofner designs for their import models, but the biggest change was naming them all:
500/1 = Violin
500/2 = Club
500/3 = Senator
500/5 = President
500/7 = Verithin
500/10 = Bass Guitar 6
182 = Professional
185 = Artist

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Further information:

[url="http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/cont.html"]http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/cont.html[/url]

[url="http://www.provide.net/~cfh/hofner.html"]http://www.provide.net/~cfh/hofner.html[/url]

[url="http://hofner.co.uk/smf/index.php"]http://hofner.co.uk/smf/index.php[/url]

[Shaggy]

Interesting stuff Happy Jack, I always liked Hofners, very individual. I once saw a mid-‘60’s “Strat” type one with the body covered in snakeskin (Not sure if mock or real!). Apart from the “McCartney” bass, Hofner and Framus basses never seemed to do as well as the guitars. Always thought they went a bit overboard on the sheet perloid though - put the stuff everywhere - seems to be making a comeback now with Italia.
If the musical instrument market had been more lucrative I’m sure the Allies would have nicked the German products after WWII as they did with the car and motorcycle industry – I used to have an old BSA Bantam which was the pre-war DKW. The East Germans turned the other half of DKW into MZ, which was a far better product than the British one!

Edited January 4, 2008 by Shaggy

[Happy Jack]

[quote name='Shaggy' post='113508' date='Jan 4 2008, 01:07 PM']Interesting stuff Happy Jack, I always liked Hofners, very individual. I once saw a mid-‘60’s “Strat” type one with the body covered in snakeskin (Not sure if mock or real!). Apart from the “McCartney” bass, Hofner and Framus basses never seemed to do as well as the guitars.
If the musical instrument market had been more lucrative I’m sure the Allies would have nicked the German products after WWII as they did with the car and motorcycle industry – I used to have an old BSA Bantam which was the pre-war DKW. The East Germans turned the other half of DKW into MZ, which was a far better product than the British one![/quote]

+1 on the Bantam - I bought a D14/4 as my starter bike in 1975. It could just about hit 60mph on the Guildford By-Pass before seizing. Coast onto the hard shoulder, smoke a Marlboro, and the bore would have freed itself again.

That "Strat" type was the 185 (Artist). In 1962 & 1963 Hofner (and everyone else) were so pushed to meet demand that they were looking for the 'pinch-points' in the production process. They discovered that it was the painting/finishing which took most time with solid-bodies. So they borrowed an idea from Eko in Italy and started covering their basses with vinyl which just had to be glued on. By the time the finished bass reached the shops and could be sold, the glue would have set.

I personally think that the vinyl-covered basses are way cooler than the painted ones. (I have two of each.)