:
This interesting guitar was purchased from
Selmer's Charing Cross Road shop in
the early-mid 1960's. The salesman explained that it was a "sample" guitar,
and indeed it looks like no other Senator. This very attractive guitar has a red finish and also a
body cutaway. The serial number does not correspond with the main Senator
series of numbers. Presumably the "S" designates that this is a sample guitar,
rather than its usual use by Hofner of indicating a guitar with a body cutaway?
One can only come to the conclusion that Hofner had made
up this special guitar in order to convince Selmer that a cutaway version of
the Senator Thinline could be offered. It took Selmer until 1965 to actually
take up this suggestion with the Senator "66" models.
The possibility of red
finishes on the Senator, and maybe other archtop models, may have been prompted
by the success of the red-finished
Verithin model that had
been introduced in 1960. In the event, Selmer must have rejected this
suggestion, as the only Hofner archtop production model supplied to Selmer
with a red finish still remained the
Verithin.