hans-jürgen

At last, a thread to post pictures... [img]http://people.freenet.de/bluezz_bastardzz/tokais2005.jpg[/img] Only the two Tokais on the left are mine, the two on the right belong(ed) to my friend who sold the one on the right side in the meantime. My main amp is the '61 Fender Bassman head on the '72 Marshall cab, in the left corner there's a '69 Marshall JMP 50 plexi combo with two 12" greenbacks (bass model).

Thanks, here's another one done during the pickup comparison for the Tokai forum:

Yeah, I know what you mean... Here's a better picture of that part: The reason why the slot looks so wide is that the upper part of the rosewood inlay is also missing. You can compare it with the intact 12th fret, it's a combined rosewood/mother of pearl inlay on an ebony fingerboard. This is one of the biggest problems with that guitar which I'm probably not able to solve myself, i.e. give it to a professional luthier. Some of the higher frets do look weird, too, and I'm not sure if Hofner installed them or if it was a bad attempt of refretting them later. On the other hand they normally are hardly ever used and wouldn't need to be refretted, and I've seen pictures of other old Hofner archtops which have similar bad high frets...

Nope, the new Clubs are semi-acoustic with a sustain block, see the description on the Thomann site: http://www.thomann.de/de/hoefner_hct_club_sb_contempoary.htm But the originals were all hollowbodies, also the 12x models which was the German and international version while "Club" was the Selmer import name for the UK. Since you already have a Hofner, you probably know this and also the fact that they built many slim versions of full sized archtops with four digit model numbers which were hollowbodies, too. For example here's a nice old President Thinline on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...649#description Some more info on these sites: http://web.telia.com/~u51210824/ (about Hofner Club models) http://www.provide.net/~cfh/hofner.html (great article about archtops) http://www.hofner.com/ (see also their Vintage Showroom) http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/ (one of the best sites about vintage Hofners with many pictures, also Buy & Sell) http://ccgi.harrisonwass.plus.com/sms/ (HofnerHounds forum)

Well, why not buy a good copy of a Gibson, e.g. a Tokai FA70? Another manufacturer of good affordable archtops is Hofner, both old and new, although the new models of their vintage archtops cost around $2,000. But you might find cheaper used ones on Ebay, too.

Oops, didn't know that, so I have to check the rules here it seems.

Hi Maurits, seems you like the archtop, so here are some more pictures of it: http://people.freenet.de/bluezz_bastardzz/465_neck.jpg http://people.freenet.de/bluezz_bastardzz/465_neck_back.jpg http://people.freenet.de/bluezz_bastardzz/465_headstock.jpg http://people.freenet.de/bluezz_bastardzz/465_tuners.jpg http://people.freenet.de/bluezz_bastardzz/465_heel.jpg http://people.freenet.de/bluezz_bastardzz/465_side.jpg By the way, what was the problem with the picture of the back, was it too big/long?

I posted this today on the Sputnikmusic forum where I found the link to this board, so I'll just copy & paste what I wrote there. OK, here I go with some scans of old paper photos, but I have to give you the direct URLs for the first two pictures, because the forum software cannot embed image URLs with a "plus" character in them: http://people.freenet.de/bluezz_bastardzz/...ls120+strat.jpg The one on the left is a late '60s hollowbody Höfner Club 40 modded with a Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck humbucker at the bridge and new Schaller M6 Mini tuners. The neck had come off, it was painted black on the top, so it was quite a bit of work to get rid of all the lacquer. As a finish I stained and waxed it which feels great. I use it as a slide guitar now, because the neck is too warped backwards to do anything else with it. The Tokai LS120 has Gibson P-94 single coils now, in 1981 the original pickups were DiMarzio PAFs which sound great in that guitar, too. But I have another Tokai LS60 with Gibson Shaw PAFs, so I like the different sound of the P-94s in this guitar. The first owner had Schaller M6 tuners installed as well. The strat on the right side is self-built from different parts, i.e. a Mighty Mite 1-piece quilted maple body, hardtail and other brass parts from Rockinger, and an ESP maple neck. The pickups are three Seymour Duncan SSL-1. I tested a lot of different wirings with them, but will probably only keep the additional neck+bridge combination in parallel and maybe in series and definitely the middle+bridge pickup in series combination. http://people.freenet.de/bluezz_bastardzz/...t+335_small.jpg The Ibanez on the left is a 1978 Musician MC300 where I changed the pickups like crazy, so it needed special Rockinger brass frames to cover the bigger cavities of the original pickups. I also changed the bridge to a 1-stop brass bridge/tailpiece later. The Luxor 335 copy on the right has the same bridge in chrome and two Seymour Duncan '59s with additional mini-switches for parallel and single coil wiring. Last but not least here are two pictures of my "work in progress", a Höfner 465/S/E3 archtop from 1963 which some fool had painted black on the top and neck. I still have most of the necessary hardware parts, but may have to work on them as well, e.g. the original 511 pickups. http://people.freenet.de/bluezz_bastardzz/465_back.jpg

Hi, why did I need so long to find it? I just added it to the guitar related category of the Open Directory Project, so I won't lose it again. http://dmoz.org/Arts/Music/Instruments/Str...ats_and_Forums/