1962 HOFNER MODEL 500/1 VIOLIN BASS GUITAR
COURTESY OF SOREN KOCH, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
SOREN'S COMMENTS ON HIS BASS:
The most well-known Hofner made. The 500/1 violin Beatle bass. I've had this since I was 16. I remember picking it up for the first time. It felt like a kids guitar, so light. I used to be the bass player in a late 80s Danish pop/rock band. Since being a Beatles fan I really fancied playing a Hofner Beatle Bass. For a couple of years my bass setup consisted of this Hofner Bass and a Vox AC-50 amp with an 18" Vox Foundation bass cab. A classic 60s setup. Anyway, the rest of the band wasn't much into the 60's sounds, and I think they found my choice of bass and amp was a bit odd (considering it was a time when everybody was going for Tune BassManiacs and Trace Elliott transistor amps). These days with everything being so retrospective, I'm sure it would be considered quite cool. But I must admit, I was able to make a BOOMY sound with this setup. Later I had to change the amp for a more modern, highpower amp, but I kept using this bass as my main instrument through out my time as a bass player (except for a short period where I used a 1964 500/1 Bass with split pick-ups as my main bass - later traded in for a 457/12 - and this '62 as a back-up). These days I very seldom play bass, I'm back where I started with 6 strings, but when I play bass it's usually this one.
Two other string-playing guys in my Beatles tribute band - Beat The Meetles - both own Hofner basses. The bass player in the band use a 1962 identical to this one as his main Hofner bass. Though they do have exactly the same specs and are very close in potcodes, this one has a much more slimmer neck, which I prefer. When I bought it, the mechanics had been changed to modern tuners and the scratchplate was missing (of course). I managed to get two-on-a-strip tuners and a scratchplate for it, so now it's back to original. These days it's strung with Hofner flat tapewound strings, which gives it a real authentic sound.
This is actually the variation made just after the one that the famous Liverpudlian bass player bought in Hamburg in 1961. It has the close-unit diamond logo pick-ups, but hasn't got the flat backside like Paul's. The headstock logo is the standard Hofner logo, not Hofner written down the middle like on Pauls. First and foremost this is a nice player.
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