Wow! Look at this Hoyer 12 string! These are beautiful guitars. If you are not familiar with Hoyer they are one of the fine German Acoustic guitar makers from the 1950's and 1960's. They made beautiful sought after Jazz guitars that were very popular with pro players in Europe. I believe that the Hoyer and Hofner factories were right down the street from each other in the same town in Germany. A lovely instrument.

Show only makers of specific products. Are any brands missing from the list? You can add them here. It has a made in Korea stamp on the back of the headstock. It has a grey/black heavy metallic finish. Hamer recessed trem, 1 humbucker, 2 single coils. It also has a little switch on it for the humbucker besides the normal pickup select switch. Guitars HOHNER has stopped the production of guitars for some time. If you are looking for information about the instruments manufactured at that time, you will find all available product details for almost all models in the document below.

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Hoyer 12-string - $300 (Beaverton )
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Date: 2011-01-24, 10:30PM PST
Reply to: sale-f2h75-2178755026@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
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I have a beautiful Hoyer vintage 12 string Guitar. The guitar was made in Germany in the late 50's early 60's and is elegantly crafted and is in excellent condition. It still has the original hardware and feature subtle complexities that prove it to be one of the hire grade guitars of this Hoyer line. It features a solid spruce top that displays the finishing cracks common to guitars made in Europe at this time due to the resin based finish used then (not to be mistaken for cracks in the body, I have had it examined). NO separation at the neck joint OR warp in the neck and the intonation is still right on. The neck is of the three piece, three tone design which gives it a rich and well crafted look. It holds a tune very well well and has a rich tone. The frets show minimal wear, low action, and most importantly has a great sound that can only be produced by a well aged guitar. I have made a hobby of collecting guitars and have enjoyed each one. This beauty is and excellent addition to any collection.

Hoyer Sg Guitar

The guitar is valued upwards at 700. I need the money for student loans and fast. $300 OBO. Die Höfnering (collecting Hofner vintage guitars), Part One.

By Stephen Candib, moniker@ca.inter.net.Copyright 1995-1997, used by permission. (Steve is a friend of mine with very unusualvintage guitar tastes. His article on this lesser-known brand of vintage guitarsappears here as a special feature. I hope you enjoy it. If you have any strangeHofner questions, feel free to email him, and not me! - VGI editor -).

Go to Part 2, General Model Info.
Go to Part 3, Specific Model Info, models 449 thru 459.
Go to Part 4, Specific Model Info, models 460 thru 470/S.
Return to the Feature Index.
Return to the Main Index.

Hoyer Guitar Serial Numbers Generator

Introduction.
Guitar collectors may be a motley crew, but most are interested in the samebrands and the same gear - Fender, Gibson, Marshall, Martin, blah, blah.It's a combination of the 'icons of pop culture' thing and the herdmentality. As a result, less mainstream brands have remained in the coolshadow of obscurity, pleasantly affordable and oh so mysterious.

That's ok, because it leaves plenty of room for the contrarians among us,who prefer shadow to sunlight, who gravitate to the vastly less expensivepursuit of stuff that doesn't say Fender or Gibson. It's not that we'recheap or never pursued careers in dentistry (all of which is, sadly, true).It's just that collecting cheap, goofy guitar stuff is still a heck of a lotof fun, compared to verifying the lineage of potentially re-topped 1959 LesPaul Standards at many thousands of dollars a crack. Besides, my assets are all tied up inEurobonds and Brazilian time-shares.

My contrarian approach embraces Hofner archtop guitars. They're cool,they're cheap, and they're big fun. And we knowledge professionals know ofthe long-standing relationship between German and American guitarmaking:Martin, Rickenbacher, Gretsch, Rossmeisl, and Bill Lawrence are just some ofthe German names in the American guitar pantheon (the guitardome).

Hofner is one of several European (mostly German) companies that builtguitars in the post-war years. These included Framus, Hoyer, Hopf, Klira anda bunch of others, including some great custom builders. Many of thesecompanies shared parts from the same suppliers. One sees the sametailpieces, bridges, tuners, inlay, and the like. By the late fifties mostof these companies had broad product lines to rival Gibson.

Hofner Model Identification.
Hofner used a simple numbering system for model identification. In arch-topterms, these ranged from the lowly 449 up to the mother-of-pearl-encrusted471. Even though they changed the system around a bit over the years, theirmodel numbers still provide a great frame of reference. More on this anothertime. They used the same approach as many American makers: the more crap youcan put onto the same basic guitar, the more money you can charge for it.

Most of these guitars are pretty much the same size as a Gibson ES175’s orL-4’s, with varying depths (Hofner started doing thinlines, copying Americanstyles, in the late 1950's). They vary in terms of details, but the basicguitars are the same. As the model numbers get higher, the laminated woodgets nicer and nicer, the amount of plastic and mother of luncheonetteincreases, and the hardware gets fancier. They also made a few bigger modelsin a size similar to Gibson ES350’s or L-5’s. And they made smallerarchtops, like the 'Club' guitars, which are sort of like ES140T’s or GuildAristocrat M-75’s.

What about collecting Hofners?
In North America, they are pleasantly rare, so the thrill of the hunt ispart of the appeal. They never made a dent in the US, and by the time theygot US distribution figured out, their prices were totally uncompetitive. In1968, an electric 470 listed for US$695 through Sorkin.

Old Hofners in the U.S. are often from England, where Selmer distributed theline. Hofner tweaked a few of its models a bit, put in the odd customfeature, so that the Brits got the Congress (sorta like the 449), theSenator (sorta like the 455), the President (sorta like the 457), theCommittee (sorta like the 468), the Golden Hofner (sorta like the 470)...and so forth. They introduced the Ambassador later on, but the idea waswearing thin. Too bad they never got to the Whip or the First Lady.

Canada is good Hofner-hunting ground, perhaps because the heavy tariffs onAmerican guitars imported to Canada made Hofner more competitive bycomparison. Dealers such as Wilfer in Montreal, and Remenyi and Heinl inToronto, sold Hofners for years.

But what do they sound like?
The smaller bodied, L-4/ES175 sized archtops like the 456 or 457 make greatelectric guitars for the very reason they are not brilliant acousticarchtops: they have tons of top and middle, cut like hell, and have no bass(except what you dial in). The acoustic versions are also very loud. Thebigger, L-5 sized archtops sound pretty good acoustically, as well aselectrically, because the larger body size adds a fair bit of bassresonance. Their pick-ups and electronics were not great, but are easily totweak or replace.
How do they stack up?
Given the juvenile bent of guitar dealers and writers to make comparisonsbetween instruments ... let's do it! What can we really compare them to inAmerican terms? The first thing to remember is that Hofner themselvesconfused the issue: their good acoustic archtops were supposed to havecarved tops, with laminate tops on the same models as electric guitars.Typically, they screwed up: they often released high-end acoustic archtopswith laminate tops, or made the carved-top ones into electrics. Oops!

Most of their guitars were all-laminate construction, although specifichigher-end models did come with carved spruce tops (bad translations call it'pine', or 'bohemian pine', but that just doesn't wash among us informationworkers. As the Rice Krispies guy says - what the heck didja think it wasmade with?). Unlike Gibson, whose laminates are heavy and have grain withnegligible aesthetic qualities, Hofner's laminates are very light-weight andusually use lovely flamed maple, even in the cheaper models. The lack ofmass makes their guitars responsive and acoustically loud. Following thediscontinuation of the Gibson Tal Farlow, it took years, until theintroduction of the ES775 and ES165, for Gibson to use pretty plywood. Sure,the reissued ES350T (with full-scale neck) in the 70's was a step in theright direction, but no one even noticed it, coming as it did in the depthsof Gibson's, ahem... 'dark period'.

In one sense, the 468/Committee electrics may be compared to Gibson'sES5/Switchmaster/ES350/Tal Farlow model (all the same guitar): pretty wood,all laminate, 17.5' bottom bout, deep-dish big jazz boxers. The smallerguitars can pretty much be compared to Gibson's ES175 if they have laminatetops, and to the Gibson L-4 if they have carved tops.

Hofner either had some very perverse notions related to build quality orliked to fool its customers, because the undersides of many of the tops alsoshow spruce grain. Mere mortals might assume that such instruments havesolid wood tops, but detailed goofoid spasticological investigation revealsthat such tops are often laminates, cleverly disguised as solid tops. It'shard to tell the difference at first glance, but tone (or its absence) doesnot lie.

Collecting Hofners is not a random choice. It's not as if I might just aseasily focused on Hopf or Hoyer. Having seen and played many German guitarsover the years, I think Hofner was the only large-scale German shop with adecent aesthetic vocabulary when it came to proportion and scale.

In general, Hopf, Hoyer, Klira and Framus all settled in on a cartoon guitargestalt. It's as if they were copying American guitars, but they were reallydrunk that day. Many of their designs are just plain ugly (even a guitarwith a shape as cool as Framus' Strato-Melody series was built to suggestcheesiness). This is not to say that these other companies didn’t make somegreat guitars. For example, unlike Hofner, Hoyer did build some fabulousall-solid wood arch-top guitars.

Hofner guitars are in a different aesthetic league. Their proportions arequite elegant for their small and large-body archtops, both cutaway andnon-cutaway. They draw on the best proportions of Gibson, Epiphone andStromberg. This kind of aesthetic balance is not rare: many good guitarshave it, and it is easier to notice those that have missed the boat thanthose that have nailed it. For instance, Fender and Gibson solidbodiesusually have it; Guild solidbodies never had it. Paul Reed Smith has totallynailed it; Joe Lado just keeps swinging.

The other thing is the necks: most of them are great big bats of wood, witha beautiful 'c' profile: just the kind of thing to make Jeff Beck proud. Andwith a manly 25.5' scale length on almost all of these instruments, skinnyshortscale wanker neck syndrome is avoided.

Perhaps the best thing about Hofners is the way the necks are attached tothe bodies. Until to late 60's, Hofner used a tapered mortice joint, withno dovetail. This kind of joint tends to creep with time, given string pulland exposure to humidity. Old Hofners almost always require neck resets,which are incredibly easy to do as a result of the simple joint. Hey, a neckreset every thirty years keeps the doctor away ... and keeps prices nice andlow, where I like them.

Alas, this too must pass...
Now that the supply of vintage American instruments is being outstripped bydemand, the deus ex machina is turning its attentions elsewhere: Guild isstill waving its hand frantically, trying to get noticed, Davoli's arestarting to cost money, and everything from Teisco to Weissenborn toMicro-Frets is being thrown into the maw, the ever widening gyre. Hofnersare beginning to get noticed.

There are three books out that deal substantially with Hofners:'Elektro-Gitarren Made In Germany', by Norbert Schnepel and Helmuth Lemme,'The Hofner Guitar - A History', by Gordon Giltrap and Neville Marten, and awonderful new book, 'Hofner Guitars Made in Germany', by Michael Naglav.There must be some serious European-based collectors out there, and thesebooks are a great source, but there are still a lot of missing pieces to thepuzzle. These books support the idea that no one knows too much aboutHofner. Giltrap's book includes an interview with Christian Benker (whomarried into Hofner and worked there for many years) that is laughablyvague. The real questions still aren't answered, like who designed theseguitars, and how many of each model were built. Surely this information mustexist, and now that Hofner has been sold to Boosey & Hawkes, who cares aboutold guitar statistics for models that no longer exist (ie. all of them)?

Hofner Model Numbers.
As previously mentioned, there were several Selmer model Hofners that werebasically the same as German models. Listed are some notes on German modelsfrom the late fifties/early sixties, with an indication of the parallelSelmer models. Because the Germans used model numbers instead of names, anddid not use serial numbers on non-export instruments, figuring out whenchanges were made to specific models, or when models were added ordiscontinued, is difficult without reference to old catalogues from specificyears. Even then, Hofner took a page from Gibson and loaded its catalogueswith a combination of puffery and vagueness which leads one to believe thattheir prime motive was to drive future guitar history buffs to distraction.

Here is a listing of Hofner hollow-body archtop guitar models. This does notinclude 'Club' or 'Verithin' guitars, just straight-ahead jazz boxes.

Hofner archtop guitars evolved from the mid 50's to the mid 60's, parrotingtrends in North America. Hardware such as tuners, pickups and wiringharnesses became better, but lost much of their charm in the process. Aswell, several things happened over time to make some model features overlap.Hofner replaced big mother of toilet seat block markers with dot markers onsome guitars, changed some of its binding schemes, altered models slightlyfor export, and were generally up to no good when the foreman was not looking.
Conclusion.
Finally, I can only tip my hat in awe to any company confused enough tobuild its guitars with beautiful flamed maple laminates, attach its guitarpickguards with common finishing nails, and load its istruments with enoughcarefully inlaid mother of toilet-seat to furnish the lobby of a Miami Beachhotel.
Go to Part 2, General Model Info.
Go to Part 3, Specific Model Info, models 449 thru 459.
Go to Part 4, Specific Model Info, models 460 thru 470/S.

Hoyer Guitar Serial Numbers 222

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