Vintage Hofner Colorama 443 / 1959 - all original!

Hi

The guitar for sale is something very special for vintage gear collectors, especially those that are into early British rock scene - the Hofner Colorama, made in 1959 and imported to the UK by Selmer. This is the version with gold racing stripes on the sides and the headstock, about a decade before this design found its way to Fender guitars finish.

Few words on the specs:

Reinforced laminated top and back, framed sides of the body with 2 gold racing stripes

Two-piece maple neck with a beech center strip, thick "baseball bat" round profile

Rosewood fretboard with 'zero' and 22 original medium frets, pearl dot markers.

Nut width- ca 1 11/16 inches

Scale length of 24 1/2 inches 

ESingle Höfner "black-bar" single-coil black plastic pickup in the neck position

1 volume control, with additional slide switches (which cut the specific frequency when set to off)

Solo / rhythm

Bass on/off

Mid on/off

Treble on/off

The guitar is in pretty decent condition for its age - body and neck have no structural damage, original frets are still very playable even though there is little wear and slight dents on first couple of them. Electronics work, however volume works correctly only in single position, making it not fully usable - please note I did not replace the pot due to collectors value of the full instrument being original, the future owner might decide if they would prefer to have it replaced with a new pot, which is both easy & cheap fix. Switches seem to work correctly. Neck is straight & fully playable with no buzzing. Tuners have been replaced somewhere in the 70s with made in japan set which works well and fits the guitar design even better than the originals. Strap pins have been replaced somewhere in its history for metal ones, I dont have the original leather strap 

The tone palette you can get out of it is surprisingly wide - although of course staying in the blues / rock area - some authentic vintage blues tones, that's for sure. I played little slide on it also, the single neck pickup works lovely with a brass slide as well, pretty versatile guitar considering the limited electrics setup.

Some info on history of this model from Hofner Vintage Website
"This model was the first Colorama imported into the UK by Selmer. It originally started life in Germany as the Hofner Model 160 (single pickup) and Model 162 (twin pickup) which were produced for the European market from 1956 to 1960. The guitar features a "semi-solid" body, i.e it looks like a solid guitar but is really a heavily reinforced plywood box. The very earliest examples had a "tear" shaped pickguard, with the later models (1959-60) having a more stylized shape (like this one). A square cornered version of the standard Hofner "black-bar" pickup was fitted, without the usual rotary height adjustment wheels. The controls were installed in the classic Hofner consul. Metallic finishes were the norm with the first models. The guitar featured here has an original dark red cellulose finish with twin gold stripes around the edge of the body and on the headstock (a full ten years before Fender used 'racing-stripes' on their Mustang). The Selmer list price in 1959 was eighteen guineas."

Guitar comes with the case shown on pics, it's sturdy enough to keep it safe during shipping for sure.

If you liked this, you need to check my other listings out, truckload full of other vintage gear made in Poland, Japan and more!

Shipping info

• Non-EU orders - shipping fee includes the customs export fees which are a must for me to apply 0% VAT on your purchase.
• EU orders - 23% VAT applies for all EU based buyers.
• All orders - I would be happy to combine your multiple orders and ship within single fee within reasonable limits of package size and total cost.