This is a nice old Hofner 496, early 60s. Not a customer guitar, this one belonged to a family member who had passed - he often told the story of saving every cent from his first job until he could purchase this instrument.
This guitar has had work done in the past that was more about keeping it playable vs staying true to the original style of the instrument. My intent was to see whether it could, without going to any exceptional lengths, be made to look a bit more “original”. As well as to improve playability a little, including maybe a re-fret etc
The main issue is the original (nicely-mop-inlaid, ebony) bridge has at some point replaced with a larger, rosewood bridge. Unsure of what glue was used but there appears to be almost a fillet of it around the bridge perimeter. Like no effort was made to clean squeeze out. Or that the squeeze out was smoothed into a filet like you’d smooth a bead of caulk…
Upon inserting my camera into the soundhole i discovered this:
These … resin-soaked… loosely-woven cloth patches run from the sound hole, over the xbrace and (not original?) bridge plate and all the way down over the first tone bar. Not super apparent in the photos is that the patches are entombed deeply in the resin, which is very thick and features several stalagmites so long and pointy they felt like bridge pins when I first reached inside. The bridge plate seems placed too far back for my liking but considering all the resin the whole setup is probably bomb-proof.
Needless to say, the bridge and whatever is happening inside is one sleeping dog I’ll be letting lie. The guitar actually sounded fine before i removed the strings with the only issues being a slightly under set neck and worn frets. I’ll address both of these.
The cantilever neck is adjustable by a stauffer clock-key mechanism.. just need to find or improvise a tool and see if I can get it working. Neck doesn’t need much to get back in the ballpark. The fretboard is interesting … narrow but width, 7.25” radius, and with very wide fretwire - 0.123” according to my verniers. Zero-fret too.
Im not normally a huge fan of elaborately decorated guitars but this one seems to work for me. Even down to the mother-of-toiletseat-bound soundhole edge.
to stay up there and then it occurred to me that they must have had it turned over and face down.