The guitar's Selmer body label.
The date inside the body - 5th April 1960.
The bass in a 1960's Selmer tweed case.
The bass came without a case,
but I was delighted to find that a case I had bought for my President Bass was
in fact an excellent fit for the 500/3 with its deeper body.
The bass has obviously been
worked hard - there is honest wear from a thumb player by the G string, and on
the bass side large bout, from forearm friction. If only it could talk? It might
be able to explain the alternative pickups that must have been fitted at some
time. It certainly sings now and sounds fantastic, very easy to play too. There
was not a control panel or pickup fitted when the bass arrived (thanks Dad!), a
wooden panel was covering the body cavity.
I had the correct pickup and
surround in my box of bits, and set about making a control panel as all I had
was the plastic plate, but then sourced an original. The scratchplate is a super
repro from Alan at www.projectguitarparts.co.uk
. I painted the edge white to match
original style. Alan also kindly sent me replacement bridge saddles. The bridge
had been filed and the adjusting knobs removed. Maybe the Selmer neck reset was
a bit shallow?! Two fibre washers were held in place by bits of stick!
One machine head was missing,
but other than that, I had to just provided a good clean and set up. I added an earth
wire from the control panel to the tailpiece too. Intonation is spot on.
Peculiar to this model is the
aesthetically pleasing and mechanically sensible curved tailpiece, every other
Hofner semi -acoustic bass I have seen has all the strings aligned in a row
rather than an arc before they reach the bridge. As both Bridge and fingerboard
are curved, this makes sense to me!
DeDaddario ECB81M (medium
scale) flat wound
strings allow for the extra length required by the tailpiece
construction, and sound great!
The top is stamped 5 April
1960 - it is hard to read, but I am fairly sure that the year is 1960.
The body is about 1/4"
shallower than a 500/5, and the body width and shape are different, not as wide,
or as convex on the top. The back is much more like a 500/5 in profile than a
president or senator bass. The headstock is the new shape, with Perspex front
(no Selmer text however). The three piece neck construction is maintained.
Although, this model has 21
frets, and clearly a gap before the pickup. I have seen other similar 500/3
models with 22 frets and no gap before the pickup. A longer fretboard? None of
us buy these guitars for their consistency of construction though!
It’s a joy to play and is
versatile even with one pickup.