One of the Most Beautiful Guitars Ever Made by Hofner

1967 Hofner Model 4700/V2 'Golden-Style' Thinline Electro Acoustic.

This super rare Hofner 'Golden-Style' 17 1/4 inch wide, 1 7/8 inch deep electric archtop weighs just 6.60 lbs. Two-piece book-matched, spruce top. Two-piece, book-matched, highly flamed maple back with an inaid, dark brown and cream "Fleur de Lys" purfled into the lower edge. Highly flamed maple sides. Elaborate tortoiseshell colored pearloid binding and multi-purfling to the body edge and multi-bound f-holes. Eleven-piece (two-piece highly-flamed maple with nine mahogany, maple & ebony center-strips) neck, a nut width of  1 11/16 inches, a scale length of 25 1/4 inches and a wonderful thick profile. Multi-bound, black-faced headstock with 'Lillies of the Valley' and "Hofner" inlaid in mother-of-pearl. Individual Kolb closed-back tuners with gold-plated oval with straight-sides metal buttons. Five-layer, black over white plastic, 'bell-shaped' truss-rod cover secured by three screws. Three-layer brown pearloid over white and black plastic heel-cap with original metal strap button on neck heel. Multi-bound rosewood fretboard with 'zero' and 22 original medium frets and inlaid three-piece pearl 'Bow tie' position markers, each with two inlaid white lines. Original three-layer black over white plastic nut. Specific-shaped, single-layer transparent acrylic pickguard with single-line gold border and "Hofner" engraved in gold from the underside, secured by a single bracket and screws with clear plastic washers. Two Hofner type 513 pickups with 'two layerwound magnetic coils, two permanent magnets, one of them with six polepieces for string response' on rectangular black plastic bases, with outputs of 6.80k, and 6.72k. Three controls (one volume, two tone - all on treble bout) plus three-way pickup selector switch on bass horn. Hofner white 'top-hat' control knobs with metal inserts, ribbed sides and securing 'grub' screws. Six individual metal (fret-wire) saddles on height-adjustable ebony base. Replacement Hofner vibrato tailpiece secured to side of body by two screws and the strap button. On the underside of the top, written in pencil, is the date of manufacture "14/12.67". All hardware gold-plated. This rare and highly unusual mid-sixties Hofner thinline electric was in a private collection of some twenty-three fifties and sixties guitars that we purchased some four years ago. When we received the guitar the tremolo arm was missing… We sent the guitar to Don Butler who is a renowned expert and restoration specialist of early Hofner's. He contacted the Hofner factory in Germany and managed to acquire a 'new old stock' replacement which has now been fitted. There are three additional small holes (each with a slot-head screw) on the tail of the body just below the tailpiece assembly. There is a small hole on the top which we believe was for a 'ground' wire to the bridge. Apart from two small cracks in the acrylic pickguard, this extraordinarily beautiful, super rare guitar is in exceptionally fine (9.00) condition. Housed in a later Excelsior five-latch, shaped black hardshell case with burgundy plush lining (9.25).

The Hofner model 4700 was introduced 1966/67, perhaps initially for the US market, as a thinline version of the top-of-the-range Hofner 470 'Golden' full-bodied archtop model (1959-1963). This was rather late, considering that Hofner had been making thinline versions of the Golden Hofner and Committee models for Selmer since 1959. The 4700 was available in blonde finish only, and officially with two pickups, although three-pickup examples are known to have been also produced. We have seen one other example - a 1966 which had "511 (II)" pickups. The Hofner vibrato tailpiece was offered as an option. Over the years, the 4700 was subjected to many changes, some cosmetic, others rather more basic such as a change from the initially fitted 11-piece neck to finally a one piece maple neck. The enduring basic specification however was the 17" wide body, the heavily flamed maple body back & sides, and the beautiful pearloid binding and multi-purfling to the body edge. All 4700 had a "Fleur de Lys" purfled into the lower part of the body back. The 4700 was discontinued, together with the 4570 and 4577 models as being the last of the "old-style" hollow-bodied thinline archtops, in 1992.