1960 Hofner brought back from the dead

1960 Hofner Colorama brought back from the dead

I just spent some of the winter months on restoring this old Gal..it had more holes in it than Swiss cheese due to the fitting of alien components such as a tremelo arm unit and a tune o matic bridge and several attempts at getting them in the right place...also the headstock had been messed about with due to the fitting of the wrong size tuning pegs
leaving the holes oversize and dozens of screw holes in the back that dont line up.



Reamed out the holes and started plugging.

Sanded flush & marked out ready for re-drilling in the correct place.

Anyway to cut a long story short..I drilled out and plugged up all the holes ( about 30 in total) gave it a good going over with filler ..and followed up with a complete respray including the racing stripes round the edges...recrowned the frets...fixed the electronics...Oh! and I made a new replacement bridge as well.
And here is what it looks like now..And it's a great player as well..click on the images for larger view

Some more pics at various stages.




My home made replica bridge.

Electronics .. Pickup works fine but switches and volume pot were in a bad way and falling to bits I had to do a bit of soldering and cleaning to get it to work as it should..The screw holes in the scratch plate were worn big so I had to cement a couple of pads to the underside for the screws to bite into (you can see them in the pic)
Also I had to make a new nut cos the original had been damaged most likely by some one stringing it up as a lefty

A bit worn ..but what do you expect for nearly 60 years old.

The bad nut..and that zero fret is way too high for a good action.

New nut at the side of the original ..string slots to be cut later on set up.

I'm curious as to whether you did this to sell , or for yourself. I've always wondered what the luthiers play , if they do.
Do they play their latest work , do they have a favorite instrument they wont sell and keep to play?
Or are they just too busy too play ? By the way , you look better without the glasses.
I'll bet that guitar is better now than it was when new.

Pukulele Pete said:

I'm curious as to whether you did this to sell , or for yourself. I've always wondered what the luthiers play , if they do.
Do they play their latest work , do they have a favorite instrument they wont sell and keep to play?
Or are they just too busy too play ? By the way , you look better without the glasses.

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My main instrument I play the most is the tenor pallet ukulele that I made years ago ..I play mostly old standards and a bit of Buddy Holly now and again.
I did this for nostalgia and I felt sorry for it being all beat up like that ...I used to have one similar to this one when I was a handsom young man and a Pop star..only mine was blue and silver like the one on the right in this picture My first real electric guitar it cost me 18 gns in 1958....I intend to use the measurements from this one to build a replica of the silver/blue one one day

Timbuck said:

My main instrument I play the most is the tenor pallet ukulele that I made years ago View attachment 106623..I play mostly old standards and a bit of Buddy Holly now and again.
I did this for nostalgia and I felt sorry for it being all beat up like that ...I used to have one similar to this one when I was a handsom young man and a Pop star..only mine was blue and silver like the one on the right in this picture My first real electric guitar it cost me 18 gns in 1958....I intend to use the measurements from this one to build a replica of the silver/blue one one day
View attachment 106622

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Wonderful restoration Ken, and happy to know that you kept and still play the "pallet" uke, my favorite build video of all time!

Nice to see what you did with it, truly a work of art.

Mr Timms, I love everything you did here with this restoration.

I am grateful that you share your projects here for us to see, and admire.

Thank you. You are a true artist with your work.

The most challenging part was the gold racing stripes around the edge, it took me a couple of attempts before I got that bit right.
First I spayed the edge gold..Then I got some pin stripe masking tape off eBay 6mm wide and 2mm wide, then a made a simple gauge out of a bit of aluminium angle and carefully using the gauge applied the 6mm tape all around the edge then the 2mm tape alongside it and then another run of 6mm tape alongside the 2mm. when I was happy with the positioning I then finally removed the 2mm tape exposing the gold centre line..Then I spray'd the whole guitar with the red paints first the Ford Colorada red followed by the Bugandy red as a sort of sun burst...and then I carefully removed the 6mm tapes to expose the gold stripes..Then it was ready for umpteen coats of clear laquer.

This is the simple gauge.

And here is the gold edge before the pinstripe tape is applied.

Pin stripe in place.

This pic is when I removed the tape.

And here it is ready to start spraying clear laquer.

And finally .. Making the Bridge ... having looked a load of pictures and getting hold of the dimensions. I purchased some 1/4" x 5/8" brass bar and some 12mm dia knurled thumb wheels off eBay, After a lot of thought on how to do this?? I made this simple jig out of scrap aluminium left over from another project...the jig is meant to swing in an arc at a radius of 9.5 inch (same radius as the fretboard) and I used this clamped on my spindle sander to put a radius on the brass blank...I made one or two out of wood first to get the set up right...This is the brass one.

And it ended up this shape (I made two in case the job went wrong later)

Then using the same jig on the disc sander with table set at an angle of 22 degrees.
with a slight mod on the jig to offset the brass by 3mm at one end.
Did one side then flipped it over and same again.

And it came out like this..Success

All I had to do next was cut the slots for the knurled thumb wheels
I did this on the bandsaw with the aid of a straight edge and a rule for an end stop.

At this point the job went wrong I should have drilled the holes for the screw shafts before I cut the slots
Cos when i used the centre punch to mark out the holes I damaged one of the brass lugs and had to scrap it
Luckily I had made a spare.

Excellent work. This has taken me back. Late 70's I had a Hofner electric bass (not the violin) - lot of similarities with the control plate on yours. Always had a bit of a soft spot for Hofners ever since. Might buy one of their old archtops, there's a lot of mileage in nostalgia! Whether I actually get around to playing it is another matter!

Michael N. said:

Excellent work. This has taken me back. Late 70's I had a Hofner electric bass (not the violin) - lot of similarities with the control plate on yours. Always had a bit of a soft spot for Hofners ever since. Might buy one of their old archtops, there's a lot of mileage in nostalgia! Whether I actually get around to playing it is another matter!

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Hi Michael...This is where I got some info on the rebuild Lots of nice archtops as well https://www.facebook.com/groups/478476499024013/