Höfner 500/1

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Höfner 500/1
Hofner 500-1V62WorldHistory LH 1.jpg
Höfner 500/1 Vintage '62, left-handed model
General
Type Electric bass
Manufacturer Hofner ; Germany
production since 1956
Construction and materials
Scale length 30 inch (762 mm) short scale
Body Sound without sound holes , ceiling from spruce , sides and floor of maple
neck Set-in maple neck
Fingerboard Rosewood , 22  frets
saddle Plastic , width: 42 mm
Mechanics 2 × left, 2 × right; capsuled
Footbridge / bridge Two-part bridge made of ebony with individual saddles and metal tailpiece
Pickups and Electronics
Pickups

2 × Höfner 511B humbuckers

Tone control passive
  • 2 × volume
  • 2 × pickup activation
  • 1 × total output regulation (70/100%)
Unless otherwise stated, the data come from the manufacturer's website (as of December 16, 2013)

The Höfner 500/1 is an electric bass model with four strings and a flat hollow body, which the German musical instrument manufacturer Höfner first presented in 1956.

The 500/1 was the first electric bass model manufactured by Höfner. The bass is particularly striking because of its small, hollow body , which is modeled on the shape of a violin . This is why the bass is officially known as the violin bass . The 500/1 achieved outstanding fame through the British musician and composer Paul McCartney , who is his trademark. During his time with the internationally famous pop and rock band The Beatles , the Höfner 500/1 electric bass was McCartney's most frequently used musical instrument from 1961 to 1970. The model is manufactured by the Höfner company up to the present day in different versions, and McCartney plays one of his copies from the Beatles' times to this day. Due to the great popularity of the Beatles and because of its typical appearance, the Höfner 500/1 is very often referred to as Beatle-Bass or Beatles-Bass in international usage .

Construction form and design

Paul McCartney with his Höfner 500/1 electric bass at a Beatles concert in 1964
A Höfner 500/1 electric bass (left in the picture) in a Beatles museum

The Höfner 500/1 E-Bass is mainly manufactured according to construction principles borrowed from violin making . The frame , top and bottom components forming the violin-shaped hollow body are first made individually from several wooden workpieces and then glued to one another and to the neck . The slightly curved top of the instrument is made of spruce wood , the sides, back and neck are made of maple wood . To protect against damage from bumps and as a decoration, the body is provided on all edges with a light-colored binding ( English : binding ) made of narrow plastic strips. On most models, the body and the back of the neck are lacquered in a one to three color gradient ( sunburst ) in shades of brown. In addition, newer versions of the 500/1 are also available in black and "natural" (clear lacquer). The “natural” paintwork is reserved for a “luxury version” of the model with the designation 5000/1 . In its current product range, Höfner also offers semi-hollow versions of the 500/1 , the body of which contains a resonance block (English: Sustain block ) made of solid maple wood .

Although the body of the 500/1 is constructed like that of an acoustic musical instrument and is therefore a resonance body , the instrument is only suitable for electrically amplified playing due to the lack of sound holes . In addition to the trapezoid tailpiece and the multi-part bridge made of ebony and metal, the top carries the electrical system of the instrument. This consists of two electromagnetic Höfner pickups , since the 1960s in double coil construction ( humbuckers ) of the type 511b / Staple Top with metal caps, as well as an inclined, rectangular plastic plate made of pearloid with the control panel. Two rotary controls ( potentiometers ) with rotary knobs for the volume of the two pickups and three two-phase sliders are attached to the control panel . With two of the sliders the pickups can be switched on and off individually, the third offers a choice between two volume levels, named "Rhythm" (70% volume) and "Solo" (100%). The 500/1 also has a “floating” pickguard, also made of pearloid, attached to the body .

The Höfner 500/1 is a model with a short scale length ( Short Scale , 30 inches ). Consisting of rosewood existing fingerboard of the bass has 22  frets and carries an additional zero collar and deposit point for marking the registers. The neck construction is in three parts; the head plate, which is angled slightly backwards, carries a pair of tuning machines on the left and right on a metal support plate.

In the 1960s, Höfner produced this electric bass model as well as an electric guitar model that was based on the same construction principle as the 500/1 and that looks very similar to it - the Höfner 459 “violin guitar” . This model had two single coil - pickups and a body whose back and sides were made of wood Anigre. Due to the very low production figures, older instruments of this type have become rarities.

The Höfner 500/1 and Paul McCartney

Höfner replica of the 1961 model of the 500/1 from 2011; here a right-handed model

Paul McCartney switched from electric guitar to electric bass with the Beatles in early 1961 after bassist Stuart Sutcliffe left the band. Sutcliffe had already played on a Höfner electric bass, the Hofner 333 archtop model , and occasionally left it to McCartney to play. During a guest performance by the Beatles in Hamburg in the same year, McCartney came across a copy of the Höfner 500/1 electric bass in a musical instrument shop in the Steinway house on Jungfernstieg . Since he could not afford a Fender bass at that time and since he liked the axially symmetrical shape of the "violin bass" as a left-hander , he bought this Höfner model for the price of 287  marks (around £ 30 at the time  ). Since left-handed electric basses were a rarity in the early 1960s, it is believed that the instrument McCartney bought was specially made by Höfner to his order.

In the fall of 1963 McCartney bought a second, additional copy of the 500/1 , the two pickups of which had a greater distance from one another. His first copy of the bass became a replacement instrument. With the increasing popularity of the Beatles, the Höfner 500/1 was given the initially unofficial nickname Beatle Bass due to its characteristic shape . Höfner used the celebrity of the Beatles and their bass player to advertise the 500/1 in advertisements and brochures with Paul McCartney . The electric basses were equipped with a cardboard tag with a portrait photo and McCartney's autograph printed on it, with the phrase “Wishing you every success with this guitar”. Brian Epstein , manager of the Beatles, is said to have received five British pounds in return from Höfner for every violin bass sold during these years , and McCartney was promised a new model of the 500/1 .

In 1964, Selmer , the British distributor for Höfner musical instruments, was to give Paul McCartney von Höfner a third copy of the model with gold-plated metal parts (hardware) made especially for him . It was only in the 1990s that it was revealed in the English press that although the instrument had originally been made by Höfner for McCartney, he had never received it. McCartney publicly confirmed this revelation as true. Since 1965, the bass intended for McCartney is said to have changed hands several times. In 1994 this particular instrument was auctioned off by the Sotheby’s auction house; However, due to the uncertain origin of the bass, the purchase was subsequently revoked. In a 1997 consumer broadcast on the British broadcaster BBC , the instrument offered at auction was explicitly described as a fake.

Paul McCartney with his 1963 Höfner 500/1 in 2010

Paul McCartney's first 500/1 , built in 1961, was stolen from London's Abbey Road Studios , the recording studio where the Beatles recorded most of their songs , in the late 1960s . The last contemporary document that McCartney shows with the 1961 bass is a commercial made in 1969 for the Beatles play The Ballad of John and Yoko . The instrument has been lost to this day.

Paul McCartney continued to play the Höfner bass he had bought in 1963 even after the Beatles broke up in 1970 and continues to use it for concerts and studio recordings to this day. In an interview with Tony Bacon, author of numerous specialist books on the subject of guitars, McCartney praised the low weight due to the hollow body and the easy playability of the Beatle bass:

“[...] You play it almost like a guitar. All the things that I played in the upper registers were only possible on the Hofner. [...] Because it was such a small and light guitar, you could play it anywhere, you felt a little more free on it. "

- Paul McCartney : in an interview with Tony Bacon, 1994

At the 2011 Frankfurt Music Fair , Höfner presented a special model of the 500/1 called the Cavern -Bass . The model is a faithful replica of the electric bass that Paul McCartney bought in Hamburg in 1961. In addition to the model variants of the 500/1 made in Germany by Höfner under the name Ignition B-Bass , a model made in Indonesia has also been available at a lower price since 2012 .

literature

  • Andy Babiuk: The Beatles sound. PPV Presse Project Verlag, Bergkirchen 2002, ISBN 3-932275-36-5 .
  • Tony Bacon: Guitar classics - all models and manufacturers . Premio Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-86706-050-9 .
  • Peter Ames Carlin: Paul McCartney - the biography . Koch International / Hannibal, Höfen 2010, ISBN 978-3-85445-317-8 .

Web links

Commons : Höfner 500/1  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Illustration of the body components of a Höfner 500/1 under restoration on vintagehofner.co.uk
  2. ↑ Bacon: Guitar Classics. P. 170/171 - several images of the model, including a large format photo of a 500/1 from 1962
  3. ↑ Höfner company catalog 2010/2011 . P. 45.
  4. ↑ Illustration of the control panel of a Höfner 500/1 on vintagehofner.co.uk (circuit diagram with English labeling)
  5. ↑ a b Höfner company catalog 2010/2011. P. 36 f.
  6. ↑ Höfner 500/1 from 1964 on the GuitarPoint dealer website ( Memento of the original from April 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / shop.guitarpoint.de
  7. ↑ Conny Restle , Christopher Li (Ed.): Fascination Guitar , pp. 201, 225. Catalog of the exhibition Fascination Guitar at the SIMPK Musical Instrument Museum, Berlin. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2010. ISBN 978-3-89479-637-2 .
  8. ↑ Babiuk: The Beatles Sound. P. 30 f.
  9. ^ The Beatles Anthology. Econ Ullstein List Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-550-07132-9 , p. 62.
  10. ↑ Babiuk: The Beatles Sound. P. 49
  11. ↑ Both McCartney's band mate, drummer Pete Best , and the Beatles' musician colleague Tony Sheridan , report on a custom-made Hofner left-handed bass for McCartney. Babiuk: The Beatles Sound, p. 49.
  12. ↑ Babiuk: The Beatles Sound, p. 99
  13. ↑ a b History of the Höfner 500/1 on the website beatlebass.net . (English)
  14. ↑ Höfner advertisement for the model 500/1 with Paul McCartney, from the 1960s  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the official Höfner company website@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.hofner.com  
  15. ↑ The words that McCartney put in his mouth read in German: "I wish you every success with this guitar."
  16. ↑ Babiuk: The Beatles Sound, p. 122
  17. ↑ Hofner's third bass - a pile of gold. In: Babiuk: The Beatles Sound, p. 122 ff.
  18. ↑ Babiuk: The Beatles Sound, p. 234
  19. ↑ Guitars that made (Beatles) history . Part 6. lmw-28if.de; accessed on May 15, 2019
  20. ↑ Bacon: Guitar Classics. P. 170.
  21. ↑ Quoted from Andy Babiuk, translated from English by Gerhard J. Oldiges: Der Beatles-Sound, p. 240
  22. ^ Dirk Groll: Musikmesse Frankfurt 2011 - Basses. In: Guitar & Bass . Issue 6 / June 2011, p. 114. MM-Musik-Media Verlag, Ulm.
  23. ↑ Dirk Groll: Höfner Ignition B-Bass . Test report in: Guitar & Bass . Issue 3 / March 2012, p. 160 f. MM-Musik-Media Verlag, Ulm.