Hofner 4600

1968 model (I believe the first year they made the 4600). Flame maple back and sides, spruce top, rosewood fretboard. These came in either red-to-black burst, or yellow-to-black burst, mine is the red-to-black. Two Hofner 511 pickups (after 1969 they used 513s), 3-way toggle, and V/T/T controls. Mine has the Hofner tremolo tailpiece, others were made with a harp-style tailpiece.

The neck pickup is warm and full sounding. Great for blues, jazz, or rock. The bridge pickup is too weak to use alone, but when added to the neck pickup you can get a nice tone that gets a little dirty when you dig in. This guitar could never be twangy enough for most country players.

Of course, as with most hollow guitars, if you run it at high gain you're prone to feedback. I noticed the guy before me commented that he would never use it live because it would feed back too much. I use mine live all the time! You just have to know your gear, and how to control it. You can get some amazing distorted tones, and controled feedback, from this guitar.

I absolutely LOVE the sound of this guitar! The only reason I don't give it a 10 is because the bridge pickup is so weak.

Don't ask me about the factory set-up, the guitar was almost 20 years old when I got it. Played good from the first time I picked it up, though. After I did some minor repairs and set-up work it was fantastic.

I played this guitar regularly for several years, including using it live. After a while I started having some electrical problems with it, so I put in into "semi-retirement" only using it for recording. About 5 years ago, though, I decided to put the work into it that it deserved, and now it's perfectly reliable again. I use it live very often, it stays in tune beautifully, and I don't worry about it cutting out on me.

I've been playing guitar for over 25 years. I build many of my own guitars, and know exactly what I'm looking for in the ones I buy. The Hofner is definitely not for everyone, but I love it. If the last guy had left his e-mail address, I'd send him a letter offering to buy his.

Circa 1969 thinline archtop in the VeriThin family, but with rounded body edges. Fully hollow, double cutaway, f-holes, spruce laminate top, flame maple back, no centerblock. Rosewood fingerboard on slinky maple neck. Black cherryburst color. "Harp" tailpiece.

Two Hofner "staple" mini-humbuckers, one volume and two tone controls. Adjustable bridge (similar to tune-o-matic, but with plexi saddles). Sorta Gibson 330 meets Epi Sheraton, but deduct 4 points for the control scheme (more on that later).

Huge difference in sound between neck and bridge p/u. Neck is full and rich, usable for jazz and the like. Bridge is pretty shrill, but one could probably get some sort of surf sound out of it.

This might make for a versatile guitar, except that the bridge pickup has a much weaker signal than the neck p/u. This, combined with the single master volume control (and two tone controls that don't appear to do much), pretty much forbid switching p/u's on the fly without stepping on/off a boost pedal at the same time.

Obviously, voicing both p/u's at once sounds almost exactly like the neck p/u alone. When distorted, it starts howling from feedback pretty much at bedroom volume.

So, rate it a decent 8 for the clean jazz tone, and a low 2 for everything else, making it a 6 on average.

The guitar had quite a few years on it when I got it, so the setup reflected the last owner rather than the factory.

The top was gradually coming off along the lower bout on the bass side, which I glued. I won't put heavier strings than .010s on it to avoid the top coming off again. Finish cracks all over.

Neck p/u occasionally goes on strike, only to work again after a few days. Stays in tune reasonably well, but my Epi Emperor is much more stable.

I can't imagine using this guitar live - it would feed back like a mother and then the neck pickup would die on me. Interesting to see which pieces would fall off first, though.

Made in 1969, 'nuff said.

In all fairness, Hofner is back in business and building great guitars these days. This one was made in the dark ages, and has very little to do with the current Hofner range.

Overall, this is a very cool-looking, but nearly useless piece of kit, mainly due to the quirky and unreliable electricals.

One could convert it to a reasonable jazz/blues guitar by swapping p/u's, switches and pots, and converting it to a 2 volume, 1 tone control scheme. That would still leave some structural/feedback issues, and it would be cheaper to buy a Korean hollowbody instead.

Keeping it for sentimental reasons and cool looks only. If it were lost, I would probably manage quite nicely with my other guitars, thank you.