Tell me a little more about Hohner guitars... oops, Hondo.

Spyke

I'm doing a little research on the Hohner brand and while there seems to be quite a fair amount of sites and referrals to sift through, does anyone here know much about them?

Is it an ok instrument, a Squier-like sort or is it a questionable Ritmiller-type story?

The LP style guitar that I found is a Hohner, it is in a sorry state but for the price it may be worth it just for the body + neck.

any ideas as to their common materials, scale length and country of manufacture?

LMinnie

Spykey...my first acoustic that i bought in Orlando was a Hohner..

You know for yourself that it was a brill guitar!

nick

I had a Hohner Rockwood somethingsomething black les paul copy. had it for a while and gigged a fair bit with it.

still bleak I sold it for some reason ☹

Link to pic of said guitar

AlanRatcliffe

Mostly Korean made, varying in quality from decent to pretty damn good - depending on model. Nothing really amazing (although I've seen some '70s and '80s acoustics that were really nice). I have a Hohner "The Jack" Bass, which aside from horrible EMG Select pickups and active tone is very good - once I'd had new pickups made and ripped out the actives, it became a great bass.

Spyke

nick wrote Link to pic of said guitar

That looks very much like the one I've found...

Gibson scale length by any chance?

Heath

well if you looking for a donor guitar , cheap is best . as long as the neck is straight and the body isn't cracked . rebuilding and modding a guitar don't really care about the old parts , as long as it's made from a decent wood of cos .

AlanRatcliffe

If it's a Rockwood with a bolt-on neck, they had plywood bodies and bad fret jobs - not good guitars sadly. You can see by the sides of the guitar as the plies shrink differently. IIRC, the pickups were single coils in a humbucker casing too.

Spyke

Alan Ratcliffe wrote If it's a Rockwood with a bolt-on neck, they had plywood bodies and bad fret jobs - not good guitars sadly. You can see by the sides of the guitar as the plies shrink differently. IIRC, the pickups were single coils in a humbucker casing too.

Ooh, that's not nice.

I do however recall seeing that there were no bolts for the neck. Seemed to be, dare I say it, neck through... (?)

AlanRatcliffe

If it's not a bolt-on, It's much more likely to be a set neck (glued-in). Could well be a better version than those I know - Hohner have been around quite a while and have made many more guitars than I have seen. Only thing to do then is have a good close look at it and take it as you find it.

Spyke

Ok, on closer inspection it's not a Hohner (Goldfish memory FTL), it is in fact a Hondo. Now my brief travels and Austin Powers-like sleuthing abilities leads me to believe that the older Hondo's actually weren't bad and are somewhat desirable, not so much after they were taken over by Musicorp...

Sounds like a typical 80's Jap / Eastern factory story.

I'll post some pics to get opinions.

Spyke

Said pics...

Heath

Thats normally what i pay for a donor neck / body . you could haggle them down a bit . i suspect everything would need to be changed electronic wise anyway and the tuners . but imo , would make a excellent donor , new paint job , new electrics , would be a good guitar to play . mostly because you be setting it up fro yourself from the start .

FatBoy

Don't know enough to comment on the guitar, but I really dig the colour scheme!