Hofner 4758 Thinline

This custom-assembled beauty was constructed made in Germany in the late 1960's but was assembled from an unfinished (bare wood) neck and an unfinished (bare wood) body in the mid 1990's by luthier Rene Roy of Sudbury, Ontario.
She has 20 frets. She has a three-ply thin laminated spruce top and (I guess) a laminated flamed maple back and sides (very similar to Gibson 335's). The fretboard, with simple dot markers (double dot at the 12th fret) is of solid rosewood (could be Brazilian but I don't know - don't really care). The headplate is ebony with mother-of-pearl block HOFNER lettering and a vine inlay. The body has w-b-w-b-w plastic binding, the f-hole has a simple white binding. The neck and headplate are unbound. The finish is a high-gloss over a transparent emerald green stain which lead me to call her "Esmeralda".

The neck is made of a one-piece solid maple (could be mahogany too - can't tell). It's thin but STRONG!

There is also a solid spruce block under the position of the pickups but it doesn't touch the back of the body. I'm told it's purpose is to help control feedback whick is an inherent problem with hollowbody electrics. I guess it works because I don't have great problems with feedback unless I'm playing really close to the amp with the volume up very high.

The body style is a thinline hollowbdoy archtop double florentine cutaway.

When Mr. Roy custom assembled this baby, I had him add the following: two separate push-pull volume controls (to change the active wiring of the APC pickups from series to parallel and hence give very different sounds). There are also two tone controls.

He also added a gold Bigsby B7 tail-piece and a gold Gotoh tune-o-matic bridge. He also added gold tuners (don't know what make they are.) Finally to highlight the APC 'Malice' and 'The Persuader' humbucker pickups, I had him install gold pick-up rings.

The hard cover case was extra at $95.00

I'm not much of a player. I mostly do back-up rhythm and chord playing but she fits very well with what I need. She has a mellow to deep what I call 'jazzy' sound. I've heard a friend play a Gibson ES-175 and this baby sounded better. Maybe it's the body, maybe it's the pick-ups (or a combination of both, I don't know).

My usual amp is a 100 watt Fender Twin (tube with two twelve inch speakers). This is WAY more than enough for me. The only complaint I've heard is from some other people who say that she doesn't 'cut' enough. That wasn't the sound I wanted but with the push-pull switches on the volume controls, I can give her a brighter sound. She has plenty of sound options for me. Two pickups, three-position pickup switch and two push-pull volume switches give her eight different pick-up settings. Who could ask for more?
Since she's as I wanted her to be and everything was well assembled by Mr. Roy, for me, there's nothing to dislike about her

She plays like butter. There's a bit of a hint of a 'dead' sound at the 11th fret on the 6th e-string and a bit of a hint of a buzz on the 4th fret of the 1st e-string but these are only noticable when picking unplugged.

Mr. Roy assembled this baby really well. The neck, which is supposed to be attached with a hook and eye system that Hofner designed is glue-attached to the body. Everything well assembled. The only problems are that, over the years, one of the gold plastic volume pod 'handles' is loose and tends to pull off. Also, the pickup selector has a developed loose contact at the 'rhythm' position which makes me have to try again a couple of times for it to catch. It seems to have problems more often during humid weather. These problems though are easy to fix. The parts just have to be replaced.
So, on the whole, she deserves the rating I gave her.

I've played 'live' with her many times and she stand up very well. All the hardware has kept very well for the five years that I've had her. Mr. Roy told me he put a number of coats of finish on her and I see no reason to doubt him from the way it's holding out.
The strap buttons are metal (gold coated) so there's no worry of them breaking. Esmeralda is a very dependable girl.

As with my Cocobolo J-16 six-string guitar and my Myrtlewood J-17 12-sting guitar, customer support was super while Mr. Roy still lived in Sudbury but he moved away a couple of years ago.

Now, I take my guitars to 12th Fret in Toronto. They've done great work so I'm quite pleased with the long-term prospect of my guitars. I recommend these guys.

I've been playing for over 35 years. I've still owned a Stella six-string since 1965, a Harmony (Sovereign) 1270 12-string since 1968. I used to have a Vox Spitfire (Strat copy) but it didn't play that very well. My Hofner electric, along with my cocobolo six-string and my myrtlewood 12-string make for a nice combination of great guitars for all occasions.

This one, along with the other Rene Roy built/assembled guitars are one-of-a-kinds. They get lost or stolen and that's it. I've got them insured for about $20,000 but even that won't replace the 'treasures' I have. I chose this one, along with the others, because of their uniqueness. Anybody can own a Gibson, a Martin, a Taylor, any one of those 'mass production' guitars but this one and the other Rene Roy ones that I have are special and unique. My children will each inherit one (with God's grace) and they will inherit beautiful, well-built and fantastic sounding instruments.