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Restoration Of A Vintage (60's) Hofner Ambassador


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I had a customer bringing in a really nice 60's Hofner "true" arch top (no solid middle) Hofner (Höfner to be correct...) Ambassador, serial number 421. The neck had come off completely, the bridge were lost and the electronics were a mess. Except fot that the guitar was in really great shape. Espesially considering how the customer got the guitar; He found it in a dumpster. He had been walking by the dumpster and ssen what lookd like a guitar case. In the dumpster there were a realy besaten up case (just rubbish, not related to the Hofner), a vintage Swedish made Levin classical guitar with the head broken off and this guitar. He picked up the Hofner and let the rest stay. I wish he also had picked up the Levin....

Anyway he asked me to document the restauration process and for once I agreed. I will not post the pics here as there are a bunch of them. I will link to the Photobucket library and bump the tread when I add new picks. Read the titles of the pics for short comments.

Here are the picture library

Hope you will enjoy.

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Current status:

Electronics fixed, it was a broken coil in one of the pickups

Neck refretted

Next step:

Glue the neck on

Make a new nut

Install bridge

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More pictures added. The nut is started. The neck is glued. A modern repro bridge was purchased. However the customer might have tracked down a NOS Micro-Matic bridge, the correct version for this guitar, so we might need to take some time off while waiting fit the bridge to get here.

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Nut finished. Guitar strung up with temporary bridge (no pics yet). Sound is warm, midrangey and have a raw quality the really cuts through. I will not fix and fit the pick guard until I get the final bridge as there is a nail the need to go into the bridge base to hold the pick guard. Pics of that will follow.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not much work done the last days. The customer have been able to locate a NOS Hofner Micromatic bridge. Thats the model used for the Ambassador originally so I've spent some time waiting for the bridge to arrive. It has finally come to me and I will install it the next day, together with the pick guard.

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Fantastic pic series! I delved deeply into German archtops for awhile a few years ago, they really are a family of guitars all unto themselves with a rich history and heritage all their own.

It started when I bought an Ovation Thunderhead body off of eBay, and I started researching the history of that particular guitar series backwards in time which led me to the Ovation/Hofner connection, then I just kept going backwards.

The Ovation Thunderhead series share a lot of common traits to your Hofner, I have a pic series somewhat similar to yours for the rebuild I'm doing on that one and I noticed several similarities between yours and mine.

This is a great website to see what the German builders brought to the table.

http://jazzgitarren.k-server.org/menu.html

Beautiful renovation job Swede!

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Very interesting saddle orientations on your NOS unit, Peter! Can you elect to reverse them if need be? I presume that sets available back when this was a young guitar (and this was all fields) had a wound G? I remember reading something about wound B strings at some point....that top must be able to take a lot of downpressure.

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Thanks for the nice words.

Very interesting saddle orientations on your NOS unit, Peter! Can you elect to reverse them if need be? I presume that sets available back when this was a young guitar (and this was all fields) had a wound G? I remember reading something about wound B strings at some point....that top must be able to take a lot of downpressure.

Yeah they are a bit odd , those saddles. They cannot be remover/repositioned, at least not without some serious metal work. I have no idea what the reasons for that is. I hope I can position the bridge good enough so that I can get it to intonate even with those saddles.

I have put up some new pics;

fitting the bridge

fitting a pickup ring (should have done that earlier...)

starting to fit the pickguard

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Thats an inventive clamp! I'll have to try that sometime, as I don't have any of those locking pliar vice gripper thingers...

The sandpaper on the soundboard for shaping the bridge is something I use a lot these days. I've never done it with a pickup ring before though.

As for the toothpicks, I would have used dowels and a jeweler's flush cut saw to fix the holes, but its not going to be seen under the pickup ring, so either way works. I'm gussing the "drill and fill" method is looked down on in this case because you'd want to retain as much of the original wood in the guitar as possible?

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Well... :blush it was rather a case of quick and dirty. I wanted to get to work on the pick guard so I used CA and toothpicks, 30 minutes of waiting and off to the next phase. And it will not be shown as the pickup rings cover it so I allowed myself a shortcut. The flush cutting end cutter (actually my fret puller) was something I tried out of a hunch that it would work good enough. Usually I use a sharp knife.

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Very interesting saddle orientations on your NOS unit, Peter! Can you elect to reverse them if need be? I presume that sets available back when this was a young guitar (and this was all fields) had a wound G? I remember reading something about wound B strings at some point....that top must be able to take a lot of downpressure.

Yeah they are a bit odd , those saddles. They cannot be remover/repositioned, at least not without some serious metal work. I have no idea what the reasons for that is. I hope I can position the bridge good enough so that I can get it to intonate even with those saddles.

Correction: With some careful prying I could get the saddles out to reverse them.

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He, he, not as brave as one might think. When turning one of the adjustment screws without the down pressure from the strings it started to move slightly and comming out of the slot. I guess I was lucky as I wouldn't have been able to get it to intonate properly without flipping one of the saddles.

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Not much done. Adjusted the truss rod nut and filed the bridge saddles so that the radius conformed to the fretboard. Quite a bit of filing as the bridge had a 10" radius or similar.

When firing it up for a final test drive the bridge pickup (the one that I repaired) suddenly is almost dead. Not 100% as there are sound, but very low output. Not thin like a HB out of phase, but just really low. Bummer. Now I need to rip the electronics apart again. Well, that'l be another day...

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New pics up.

I found the problem. The switch was bad. I could nearly get it to work, but it still had like 2-2.5 Kohms between the solder points for the bridge pickup. I found a modern repro switch that I have ordered. So it will take a few days before it arrives from England. After that I can hopefully return the guitar to its owner.

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I'm quite happy with the restoration in total. I'm a bitt pissed that I didn't found the problem with the switch earlier, but what can I say. The profitability of thsi specific job was a bit on the low side as I took it in a bit cheep. The reason for that was that I really wanted to do this job. Lot of fun parts. but I priced it a bit low to be sure to get it. But that is a luxury I can afford as i have a sday job so I'm not depending on the money i make on guiatar buidlign and repairs.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The final part of this repair. The switch arrived. got it in and everything works fine. The sound is nice. The bridge pickup is a bit on the bright side and the neck pickup is on the darker side. on low to medium settings the neck and the combo setting is very nice for bluesy stuff. Cranking the gain a bit does wonder to take the bright bridge pickup and gets you into ACDC land. Hope you all enjoyed.

And if anyone came late to the party;

Here are the picture library

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  • 7 years later...

I have just acquired this very guitar, same serial number

if I had not found this post I would not have been able to tell so much work was done

its truly an outstanding guitar.

would love to have seen the restoration photos buy sadly they are not available on photobucket any more

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