The year is 1997 and things are at a low ebb for Hӧfner.
The major management changes described at the end of the previous chapter had
all served to un-settle the company, but none more so than the move out of their
traditional “home” of Bubenreuth. There had necessarily been a reduction in
guitar output leading up to the day of the move. The stockpiles of
part-completed bodies and necks accumulated over the years, many of them made
for long-obsolete guitar models, were disappearing from out of the factory in
large quantities after being sold off to dealers and luthiers.
Production of the old faithful archtop models – the 457,
463, 470, and 477 - has ceased, as well as the AZ guitars, leaving only the
Jazzica and Nightingale models in the catalogue. Admittedly, these are two fine
modern instruments, and Hӧfner are still producing large numbers of classical
guitars but even so, Hӧfner’s traditional archtops and semis market was being
seriously neglected. So, what was to be done?
Herr Schöller had set about designing two new
full-bodied archtop models for production whilst the key Bubenreuth luthiers
were still arriving at Hagenau. One was to be a traditional electric archtop
with two pickups mounted without routing directly onto a solid carved spruce
body table – the Hӧfner Vice President. The other was to be a jazz guitar in the
format that was now considered necessary by most modern players; i.e. an archtop
with a solid carved spruce table and with a single floating twin-coil pickup
suspended above the body table from the end of the fingerboard – the New
President. The name “President” was significant as this was the name given by
the Selmer Company back in 1952/53 to that famous archtop which had been the
workhorse of so many British guitarists back in the 50’s and 60’s. Indeed, the
457 model that had only just been discontinued has often been erroneously called
the “President” by many people.
Both guitars were launched in 1998 and the New President
in particular was very popular, with monthly sales immediately matching those of
the Jazzica. The Vice President, which had been conceived to provide Hӧfner’s
catalogue with a two-pickup archtop to provide more people with more
versatility, actually struggled to sell half as many as the New President.
Perhaps this was because the time for full-depth acoustic bodies subject to
feedback when amplified was now disappearing, and because of more competition in
its sector from the thinline semis of both Hofner and other manufacturers.
The basic specification of both
guitars was identical with,
as mentioned above,
the 16¼” wide solid carved spruce body table, African Maple (Anigree) rim and
back, single piece European rock maple neck,
and ebony fingerboard. As with the Jazzica, a 25¼” (641mm) scale length was
adopted, with the neck meeting the body at the 16th
fret which, although providing greater access to more of the fingerboard than
the traditional 14th
fret neck set, does give the guitar a slightly different feel. Again, as
with the Jazzica 24 frets were provided, although this was reduced down to 22
frets on New Presidents made after around 2006/07.
The same composite material headstock fascia with
bell-flower design as later used on the Jazzica Custom from 2000 was also
specified. The hardware on the two guitars did however differ – a Lyre-style
tailpiece being provided on the Vice President as opposed to an ebony wood faced
tailpiece on the New President as fitted to the Jazzica and Jazzica Special. No
pickguard was fitted to the Vice President, but the New President was given a
polished ebony wood guard on which the volume and tone controls were fitted in
order to avoid compromising the acoustic performance of the carved spruce top.
The New President was supplied in natural blonde
nitrocellulose lacquer and gold hardware, where-as the Vice President had the
option of Sunburst or Black finish, both with nickel-plated hardware. A hand-purfled
inlay in the shape of a Fleur de Lys, just as had been the case with the old
1950’s/60’s Hӧfner Committee, adorned the body back on early examples of the New
President. Unfortunately, this was soon discontinued due to it adding too much
cost to the guitar. The workmanship involved in this feature had also come in
for some criticism by reviewers who, unlike in the days of the old Hӧfner
Committee, now expected the absolute precision of computer-guided machinery.
The New President was removed from the catalogue in 2013
after total sales of around 800. From 2002 onwards, quite a few of these guitars
were finished in Violin Varnish (Shellac), which although easily scuffed is
almost as easy to repair (by a good luthier!). The Shellac finish is very
attractive and unusual on an archtop guitar, and so this finish proved to be
very popular, hence encouraging Hӧfner to apply it to even some Verythins and
Club basses.
Like the Jazzica, the New President proved popular with
many jazz guitarists, including Peter Leitch and also Kenny Poole who can be
seen using his Hӧfner on many videos.
The Vice President was discontinued in 2004 being
replaced by a thinline guitar – the Hӧfner Thin President, perhaps due to the
disappointing sales figures referred to above but also more probably because of
the enforced cancellation of Hӧfner’s Jimmy Bruno endorsed guitar, from which
the initial version of the Thin President was developed. Approximately 130 VPs
had been produced over a period of 7 years. Towards the end of the Vice
President's production run, its specification had been reduced slightly by the use of a rosewood
fingerboard and abalone fret-dots rather than the ebony board with mother of
pearl fret markers on the earlier VPs.
Hӧfner’s
one and only thinline semi, the Nightingale, had been running now for almost 15
years, and had proved fairly successful, but certainly not a smash-hit. As
referred to before, Rob Olsen had arrived in Hagenau in 1999 in order to help
with suggestions as to how the Hofner sales figures in the US could be improved,
and these included ideas from dealers and players regarding the Nightingale. The
consensus of opinion was that it was too much like a Gibson. If Americans wanted
a Gibson-look-a-like, they would buy a Gibson and not a Hofner!
Ideas regarding up-grading the Nightingale coming from the States included “let’s try the Jazzica-style sound holes”, “get rid of the complicated and un-necessary stereo electrics”, “how about some pickups that look and sound like proper humbuckers”, and “get rid of the fancy birds-eye maple and let’s have a proper spruce top and flame maple body”. There was also the question that was continually being asked by the many faithful Hӧfner enthusiasts, i.e. “When are you bringing back the Verithin”, followed by “I used to play one of those back in the 1960s and they were great guitars”.
Actually Hӧfner had also finally realised that nostalgia
did sell guitars. They had learnt this very slowly with the famous Hӧfner Violin
Bass. It had taken their Japanese distributors, Music Ground in the UK, and
hundreds of individual bass guitarists from all over the world many years to
persuade them to produce re-issues based on the 1960’s version of that iconic
little bass, and following the introduction of the V61 “Cavern” and V63 500/1 in
1994, by the turn of the century they were selling like hot cakes! A modest toe
had also been dipped in to the nostalgia-water with the “President” models in
1998, even though the New President however could not really be described as
being anything like a re-issue of the old President archtops.
It is believed that going back to the old Verithin body
shape was actually Hubert Kaa’s and Dieter Fischer’s idea. These two
long-serving Hӧfner luthiers were following on with same traditions of
involvement as Janez Janus’s earlier involvement with the Jazzica development
which was described in the previous chapter. A new Verithin model could be made
with a close appearance to the 1960’s guitars with their spruce and flame maple
bodies and traditional Hӧfner humbucking pickups. The only real “improvement”
that had to be incorporated would be the sustain block which of course is hidden
inside the guitar’s body.
Just one problem – the name “Verithin”, which was the
name given to the guitar by Ben Davies of Selmer London. Although that company
had ceased trading many years ago, Hӧfner still had to consider who now owned
any rights to the name. There was however an easy solution - simply change the
letter “i” for a “y” and call the new guitar the “Verythin”. Easy!
A few prototypes of the new Verythin were made up in
late 1999; some initially with 24 fret fingerboards and some with the finally
adopted 22 frets. Various types of
hardware were also tried before the by-now fairly large committee of interested
parties, Messrs Schöller, Fischer, Kaa, Olsen, and Stockley, were satisfied. The
Verythin Classic was born.
Hubert Kaa working on a Hӧfner Verythin Classic.
Hӧfner introduced the Verythin Classic model in 2000, a
guitar that certainly had the same body shape and very thin 30mm depth of the
old 1960’s model, but there the similarity ended. This new guitar was intended
to impress, with its blonde nitrocellulose finish, beautiful figured African
Maple (Anigre) back and rims, ebony fingerboard inlaid with mother of pearl
block fretmarkers on a European rock maple neck, gold plated hardware, oh and
those stylish “slash-design” soundholes. Perhaps Hӧfner decided to also provid it
with the gold-plating, ebony fingerboard, pearl block fretmarkers in order to
help span the differences between the new model and the old Nightingale that it
replaced and so achieve a smoother transition of style.
A spruce sustain block was of course fitted to the
centre of the body. Two Kent Armstrong designed mini-humbucking pickups (Type
514) with traditional Hӧfner “diamond logo” covers were fitted, together with
what appeared to be conventional individual volume and tone controls, plus
three-way selector. However, the two tone pots were far from being conventional,
as both controlled the “Clear Contour” circuits which provided a twin-coil sound
up to “8” and a single-coil sound from “8” to “10”.
Rob Olsen had actually been the person who made an
approach to Kent Armstrong about designing a mini-humbucking pickup for Hӧfner.
Kent agreed to work on providing Hӧfner with the best specification for the
pickups to suit Hӧfner’s purposes. The pickups were then manufactured by
Schaller in Germany, and these are still the ones being fitted to many Hofners up to the present day.
No pickguard was fitted as standard, but an option of a
black celluloid guard was in fact offered in some catalogues. I have yet to see
a Classic so equipped.
Another 1960’s feature that was incorporated into the Classic’s design was the use of a “Lyre” tailpiece instead of the “stop-tail” units that had been fitted on the Nightingales and the “T” semis before that. All–in-all, the Verythin Classic showed signs of typical committee design confusion and compromise, but this actually resulted in a very attractive and certainly an individualistic guitar. Current owners of this model tend to hang on to them, as can be seen by the fact that very few are seen up for sale. The Classic remained in the catalogue for over ten years, up to the end of 2010, when it was replaced with a lower specification but less-expensive version called the Verythin Special which is described in Chapter 16.
After a year in 2001, Hӧfner introduced another variation on the Verythin Classic - the Verythin Vintage. This guitar was basically a Classic finished with brown violin varnish and with a traditional Hofner rectangular control console fitted for the electrics instead of the much more comprehensive arrangement of the Classic. On the console, two of the slide switches turned each pickup on and off, with the third switch providing series or parallel wiring on the bridge pickup.
The Vintage was in fact the first Hӧfner guitar model to be
given a violin varnish finish, followed soon after by a few of the President archtops. Perhaps Hӧfner were again trying to achieve a “traditional” look in
order to attract the old customers but still make sales to guitarists looking
for a good quality but individualistic guitar. No one playing a Verythin Vintage
could ever be accused of following the Gibson crowd!
Unfortunately, very few Vintages were sold, perhaps less
than 20, and so the model disappeared from the price lists at the end of 2005.
In 2002, Hӧfner finally introduced a Verythin version
that was more similar in concept to the old Verithin of the 1960’s. The Verythin
Standard appeared as a straightforward, no-nonsense semi with a 30mm very thin
body. It still managed to resist the urge of the herd to look like a Gibson 335,
although in fact the replacement of the Classic’s lightweight Lyre tailpiece
with a heavy stop-tailpiece was intended to provide for a darker sound than the
Classic, more akin to that of the Gibson.
Conventionally shaped F-holes replaced the Classic’s
slashes, and a laminated African maple (Anigre) top was specified as for the
back and rims. The fingerboard was honest down-to-earth rosewood with
fret-marker dots, and there was no sign of any gold plating. Hӧfner were now
back in the business of producing workhorses. Even the “Clear Contour” tone
control was absent!
The pickups were initially the Kent Armstrong designed
mini-humbuckers, but these were changed from around 2005/06 onwards to full-size
Schaller units (Type 515). The intention of this was to provide the Standard
with an even darker sound, more suitable for playing the blues. The Verythin
Classic continued to use the mini-humbuckers in order that the potential
customer should still have the option of these lighter-sounding pickups.
Of course, Hӧfner being Hӧfner, a little bling was still
required. This actually came by the bucket-load in the beauty of the Anigre
figured body which was highlighted even more by the nitrocellulose Transparent
Cherry and Transparent Amber finishes on offer. The guitar looked fabulous! It
immediately became a much better seller than the Classic, with initial sales of
around 90 units per year and a total of about 450 before it was discontinued in
2008.
The “JS” stands for John Stowell, the famous American
jazz guitarist and guitar teacher. Rob Olsen bumped into him in 2000, and they
began discussing Hӧfner guitars. John explained that he liked the looks of the
Jazzica, but felt that it was too large an instrument for him. Rob showed him a
Verythin, and he liked it but asked if it could be made to look more like the
Jazzica. So, Rob put the problem back to Hagenau and after a few ideas had been
passed around, the JS Signature model was born.
The design that John and Hӧfner came up with comprised
of a Verythin Classic, with its laminated spruce top and (maybe strangely for a
jazz guitar) a center spruce sustain block, but with a single mini-humbucker
pickup located at the neck. On earlier examples of the model, this pickup was
mounted directly onto the top of the body top, whereas on later guitars it had a
floating pickup suspended from the end of the fingerboard. Single body mounted
volume and tone controls were fitted, and a “Clear Contour” circuit was
controlled by the rotary tone control.
The body edge purfling of the Classic was retained, as
was the mother-of-pearl block fretmarker inlays in the ebony fingerboard and the
gold plated hardware, but a New President style ebony faced tailpiece and ebony
pickguard were also included in the package. Two finishes were available – the
nitrocellulose natural blonde or the brown violin varnish.
The model proved to be popular, with Ringo Starr and
Paul Carrack both being owners of violin-varnished “JS” Signatures. Other Jazz
guitarists to use the model include Sid Jacobs and Jimmy Wyble.
The first examples were shipped in December 2001, and
from then steadily on until 2010, with a total of around 150 being produced.
This is all rather odd, as the JS didn’t appear in the general Hӧfner catalogues
until 2004 and the price list until 2005, when it was described as being “New”!
A check on the shipping destinations prior to 2005 shows that these guitars were
almost exclusively being sent to the US, and so it would appear that the US
distribution organisation at the time had got right behind the model from its
inception in the days of Boosey & Hawkes.
The idea of using Violin Varnish, otherwise known as
shellac, as a finish for guitars came from Sid Jacobs, the US Jazz guitarist who
had accompanied Rob Olsen on the first visit to Hagenau in 1999. Whilst looking
around the workshop, he noticed the varnish being applied to violins and took an
immediate liking to that finish. Hӧfner took up his suggestion and began
experimenting with shellac in an attempt to make the finish more durable, and
hence more capable of absorbing the punishment that guitars are expected to
suffer “on the road”. After failing to improve shellac’s wearing properties
however, Hӧfner finally decided that shellac couldn’t really be improved in that
respect. Owners would therefore have to accept that slight draw back in
comparison to conventional finishes, but be rewarded by their guitar looking and
sounding great.
Most people love the Violin Varnish finish, but of
course there are still a few owners who can become concerned about pore lines,
pit marks, and general wear, all of which has to accepted as part of owning a
guitar with such a traditional finish.
__________________________________________________
All Text is Copyright
© 2022 Steve Russell. All Rights Reserved