Hofner Travel Guitar

Single bridge position humbucker solid body guitar with volume and tone controls. Combined bridge/tailpiece. Compact body which ends just beyond the tailpiece, making the guitar as short as possible overall. No idea what woods are used, but it's nice and sustainy. Not much in the way of features, but it's not meant to have! Comes with a nice custom fit bag with a big accessory pocket and a truss rod key.

Very "humbuckery" (not surprisingly). You can tone it down with the single tone control, which works surprisingly well at taming the highs in a subtle way instead of just making it sound muffled, as they usually do. Quite a bright humbucker sound, but it's really a one-sound guitar. It's a very high output pickup (baffled by some of the other reviewers' comments in this area), the highest on any guitar I've owned. Would be best for noisy rocky stuff. If want honky, stratty front pickup blues sounds, forget it with this guitar, because it can't do it! The pickup works, but it's not too sophisticated...

Ha ha ha ha ha. Not. Had to greatly lower the pickup (output FAR too high, and magnetic field was interfering with string vibration), adjust the bridge height, rake and saddles, recut the nut slots, hammer down high frets, adjust the truss rod and give it a light fret stoning. Oh yeah, also had to file down a sharp corner on the bottom "E" saddle of the bridge, because it was digging into my hand and bugging me. BUT.. apart from the frets, it does seem to have been quite well made. Mine is the metallic red one, and it's a very good finish. It only gets a 2 because of the appalling factory setup, though.

I haven't used it at a gig yet, but it seems pretty solid so far. To be honest, there isn't a lot to go wrong with it, so I'd be surprised if it did cause problems. I'd guess it's an 8.

Sorry, can't comment on this one, as I haven't contacted them.

Played since the late 60s, currently use Fender Twin, Peavey Bravo and Gordon-Smith GS2 with Zoom 505ii and Magicstomp. I bought it because it is very cheap for what it is, and it has some curiosity value. Despite the initial setup problems, I really like it, and play it a lot. Some people have criticised it for being neck-heavy.. well, it is... slightly - but it's not like my ancient Burns Sonic which I got rid of years ago, and which was virtually unplayable because of this problem. I use a fabric strap on the Hofner, and because of the friction twixt strap and clothing, when I take my hands off it, it doesn't nose-dive. It would be greatly improved by the addition of a single coil neck pickup which would make it more versatile, and a better bridge pickup, but all this would push the price up, and people would probably then shy from buying it. I think it's a well-designed little beast as it is, though, and for eighty quid, it's definitely worth it. I'd buy it again.

Chinese made Hofner Shorty. 24 frets, r/w fingerboard, single humbucker
travel guitar.
Not sure what the body wood is, not that it matters on such a small bodied travel guitar.
Cheap and cheerful hardware, but reasonable value for the money.
Has a useful carry bag.

I mainly bought this as a practice guitar for when I go away. I will mainly paly it unamplified, so don't really care what it sounds like.
It sounds okay, but no better than you'd expect considering the
body size/shape and cheap hardware.

Setup was poor, so lowered the action and redid the intonation.
Finish is relatively poor in places, but still okay for the money.

I won't use this for gigs, although it will probably do okay at the
folk club. It's basically to take with me on holiday.

No contact - and none necessary with such a cheap guitar.

Playing for 20 years. My main guitars are Yamaha SG1000, plus 80's
superstrats. I have many other spare parts mutts I put together for fun. Obviously it is not about to take over from any of them. It's basically for taking away on holiday or business trips etc.
All in all this is a good travel guitar for the money, nothing more,
nothing less. You can sling it in the bag and on your bag, and you can even ride a bike with it on your back.

chinese made "shorty" travel guitar- single humbucking pickup electric, wrap over bridge, Gibson type scale, length this one finished in metallic torquoise

acoustically quite bright & resonant surprisingly loud for its body size. plugged in, a little brash but loud. no variation except for using vol&tone controls

average set up poor skinny strings overall needs a proper set-up to play properly. bridge adjustment haphazard restringing is not possible without removing the bridge so individual string changes, forget it!

cheap and cheerful. strap buttons of no proper use the instrument is neck heavy the best support is to use an acoustic bootlace jobby around the back of the nut. easily falls off your knee whilst sitting. using it live? well I've seen some guitarists use all sorts of junk to get by so why should this be any different? the shorter scale leads me to conclude should only be used with medium gauge or bigger to stay in tune

reading the previous reviews it occured to me that this cheapy gtr has the same drawbacks as most of the other new cheapies. at this price the final quality control and set-up is generally poor & unreliable. look around for a good one. however I won't let that affect my overall impression of the shorty. I found a gtr that is quirky and fun at a price that I would expect to pay for a half decent chorus pedal. the fact that I can take on holiday & lose it or use it as coffee table is a bonus.
what other practice instrument is as fun and fits in your suitcase?

As described by the previous two reviewers - Black travel guitar, made in China 2004/5, single humbucker pick-up, volume and tone controls. Everything you would expect to find on this type of guitar at this price!

The original strings were very thin and the intonation/action and pick-up all needed serious adjustment. With a new set of size 10 strings,the pick-up raised as far as it will go and the action and inotation adjusted it sounds suprisingly good! It produces a lot warmer and fuller sound than my Squire Strat or Yamaha Pacifica!

The inotation was way out, and the pick-up needed raising fully before it produced a decent volume and tone. Also the earth connection to the bridge had lost contact with the bridge post and needed reconnecting. As mentioned by a previous reviewer it appears as though the bridge posts are being pulled out by the string tension - however on examination the posts are approx 1.5 - 2.0 cm deep and the fact that the teeth of the posts are visible is because of the angle of the body and a lack of precision in cutting the holes. I have seen the same thing on many guitars with this stle of bridge.

The strap buttons are very small and awkwardly positioned, you need to make sure the strap is firmly attached, and I would recommend keeping the strap short as the neck is heavier than the body! I have not gigged with it yet but it seems as tough as any budget guitar - and at this price it's not the end of the world if it gets damaged.

N/A

After initially being very disappointed with the poor set-up/sound I was eventually very impressed with the sound produced and the lightness and portability of this guitar! Spending an afternoon dismantling it and reassembling it was worth the effort. The biggest suprise came when I put it away and tryed playing my Pacifica, it sounded thinner and felt incredibly heavy in comparison. This is a very cheap guitar designed to be portable, it sounds better than you would expect and on this basis I have to give it a high overall rating!

2005 re-issue. Made in China. 24 Frets. Volume and tone control.
One passive humbucker in bridge position. Very small
solid body. Blue metallic finish. Stop tailpiece with 'wrap-around-bridge'.
Closed tuners. Neck in 'Srat'-scale. Rosewood finger board.

Rating in relation to price and purpose of this guitar.

This is a travel guitar. I bought it to do some practicing on my
frequent business trips. So did not expect a good sound. After trying it with my equipment (Hot Rod de Ville with extention cabinet) I found its sound surprisingly good. So I also use it for practising with my Hard Rock Band. This guitar has a bright sound with more sustain than you expect from this a small body!
The output of the humbucker is as high as that of a DiMarzio Super Distortion. I will defintely not use this guitar for gigging!. My rating is in relation to price and purpose of this guitar.

Factory set-up was o.k. I only had to do some fine tuning.
Everything was properly adjusted.
I could not find any flaws to complain about.

This guitar is not made for live playing, but would certainly withstand it.
The hardware seems to be robust.
It is a travel guitar. I will probably use it as a back up for gigs.

I had no contact with Hofner so far.

I play for more than 40 years. My other guitars are a 76' Gibson SG, a Fender American Stratocaster, a Yamaha SC 1200 and a Yamaha RGX TT. I use Fender (Hot Rod de Ville, Princeton Reverb II) and Peavey (MX of VTX series).
In case of loss I would buy a new Hofner Shorty. It is small, light and so easy to transport.

This is the new 2005 re-issue of the 1980's Hofner Travel Guitar. Its basically a 24.75" neck with a compact body, this enables you to carry it easily. It comes with a single humbucker, gig bag and allen key. The bridge/tail piece is a single, combined unit and the tuners are unbranded. The finish is in an attractive metallic blue/red/black.

The single humbucker that comes with this Travel Guitar is terrible. It sounds muddy when the tone control is turned right up or down. The overall power of the pickup was also very very weak. I played it throught my Vox AD30VT which makes almost any guitar sound awesome, except this one. No matter how hard i tried to tweak the sound it sucked.

The first of these models i bought was terrible quality. The nut was a mess, and the neck was missing alot of varnish making it half finished. The tone nob was wonky - i spent half an hour trying to put it on straight but with no luck. The bridge/tailpiece was also being pulled out of the body by the string tension. I swapped it for a second model but this was no better, again there were problems with the tailpiece and the electrics looked like they had been soldered by a blind man!! My biggest gripe with this guitar was that the high 'e' string was too close to the edge of the fret board so that when you fretted a note, the sting slid off the neck. This made it impossible to play.

I was going to use this guitar at the odd local gig, or to take on holiday etc. However I wouldn't even consider it now, the quality and sound produced by this guitar was terrible, dont even get me started on the factory set up! You cant even play this guitar standing up as the neck is way to heavy to be balanced by the body. A disaster all round.

The shop I bought this from were friendly and did exchange/refund the guitars without hesitation, I did not deal directly with Hofner - it wasnt worth the hassle.

I usually gig with my squire tele and I will continue to - its awesome now I've made a few mods. Even an encore strat copy i once owned was a better guitar than this little (you can buy this in catalogue shops for #80 complete).Hofner once rated highly up my ladder of good quality guitar makers, not any more. I wasnt expecting anything amazing for the price but I did expect a guiatar that was playable and of good quality. Its a shame because it looks really cool when hung on your wall! If anyone nicked it i'd laught, get the insurance and put it towards something decent! If you want a cool guitar that looks ace on your wall, then rush out today and buy it, if not just burn the hard cash, you'd have more satisfaction.