Vintage German Archtops

[Sasha Robot]

I've seen pictures of a black Johann Wurm guitar that looks similar.

I had the same thoughts, but I couldn’t find a similar guitar online.

[niels]

Dear people of the forum
I consider you to be experts on german archtops, so I hope you will be so kind as to shed a light ...
In the pictures is an archtop that is now residing in my living room. It has no markings inside or out and I would like to know more of its origins. So if you could enlighten me I would be grateful. Here are some pictures.
Thanks for watching.

[Ol' Fret]

Experts on German archtop guitars are now springing up from all corners of the web, both bright and dark.
I'm no expert, at least not on instruments like the guitar pictured. If I had to offer a personal tip, it would be a mid-range version of a German Tellson (Oskar Teller & Son), probably from the 1960s in Bubenreuth.
Teller is still active today, primarily in the production of high-quality classical guitars. In the 1950s and 60s, they also produced a considerable number of archtop guitars of all classes, which are respected for their consistent quality, though not widely known by name.

[niels]

thank you Ol' Fret. Mystery solved !

[cmajor9]

It also shares many features with guitars built by Helmut Hanika, sold with his label “Soli” or sometimes under the “Hopf” brand. How does it sound?

[niels]

hi cmajor9, thanks for asking
the tip Ol' Fret gave was 100% spot on. I found a picture with description on Schlaggitarren.de. Still some mystery though, mr Teller could not recall having made a nr 13 .

TELLSON Schlaggitarren von Oscar Teller – Schlaggitarren

To my ears the guitar sounds resounding, bright and fresh. A tone will keep ringing for quite a while.
I will try and attach a sound file, just a few chords to get an idea.

[cmajor9]

OK, if it satisfies you, but also look here, particularly at the Record Blonde model: SOLI – Helmut Hanika – Schlaggitarren

[garybaldy]

OK, if it satisfies you, but also look here, particularly at the Record Blonde model: SOLI – Helmut Hanika – Schlaggitarren

I like the link. There is info on Fasan guitars, of which, I have two (budget models).

[niels]

OK, if it satisfies you, but also look here, particularly at the Record Blonde model: SOLI – Helmut Hanika – Schlaggitarren

The Soli Record Blonde and the Tellson Modell 13 are so much alike.
I am sticking with Tellson though. Also because of the extraordinary shape of the scratch plate which is supposedly typical Tellson.

Interestingly in the Teller story it reads, 'in 1975 his son Harald, after his apprenticeship with Firma Hanika, joined the company.' Competitors / colleagues

[Hammertone]

There are some specific visual "tells" that are handy when trying to identify which shop put together these archtops. The typically sparsely adorned, all-laminated or pressed-top mid-range models often provide few clues. Some are very easy to read, others, less so. IMO, those are Hanika, not Teller, f-holes.

[Ol' Fret]

At least with Tellson guitars, I would be hesitant to rely on the shape of the soundholes as the sole criterion for identification, as (not only) Tellson soundholes can vary. My guess is that these were cut by hand in the violin-style, not routed using templates. In the available photos, this is difficult to assess anyway, since the guitar belly was photographed at a slight angle.

For decades, I've advocated for providing the most precise dimensions possible of the respective body. This also includes a look inside to assess the bracing and blocks, and of course, differentiating between carved, solid-pressed (with and without hand-finishing), and laminated spruce tops.

Additionally to this, visual "tells" are naturally welcome. In this regard, the following points would indicate a Tellson - as opposed to Soli archtops (corresponding areas marked with arrows). As always, exceptions prove the rule:

1. The transition from the neck/zero fret to the headstock is angular, not rounded.

2. The volute is more Glassl-like, not rounded (or Otwin-like) like on Soli guitars.

3. The distance from the last fret to the end of the fretboard extension is consistently wider on Tellson guitars than on Soli guitars.

4. The inlay at the 12th fret is not red, as on Soli Record models (the blonde one in the link above given by cmajor9 was fitted with a new fretboard).

5. The pickguard is typical of Tellson guitars, unlike any Soli.

6. The area near the neck-body joint, where the neck heel meets the cutaway, is covered with pearloid - typically Tellson-style.







The neck is certainly a Kollitz neck. Since Oskar Teller ended up in Garmisch-Partenkirchen after his expulsion and then worked in Ohlstadt (now practically a "suburb" of Garmisch-Partenkirchen ... the Ohlstadt folks will kill me!) until 1951, he very likely knew Artur Lang. Lang was known to be related to Kollitz and supplied corresponding, pre-fabricated necks to friendly and worthy "competitors" until the mid-1960s – and no, not due to a lack of work: Lang had considerable delivery times for his own guitars at that time. From the mid-1950s onward, the typical Lang necks featured the well-dimensioned square steel reinforcements – their 2mm wall thickness used is no longer available in the EU today. It is quite possible that not only Glassl sourced the necks for his top models from Lang, but also Oskar Teller, whose consistently high-quality work Lang certainly had taken note of early on.
So, if this neck would be magnetic, best to test on the backside, chances are that it was supplied by Artur Lang.


Archtop guitars, at least the budget and mid-range models, from manufacturers like Soli, Teller, Astro, and Klira represent a kind of "conspiracy against the security of mind" to me. They are often so similar and overlap in so many aspects that I would be inclined to believe they must have been made in one large Chinese factory - lol. It's worth noting that these manufacturers knew each other and, for larger orders, especially for export, helped out competitors with their own components. The network back then was much larger than one can imagine today.


Other "conspirators" were Fasan and Isana. There again are confusing overlaps between these two manufacturers in bodies and necks. And this brings us, besides the possibility of planned past assistance and collaboration between manufacturers, to another consideration: Frankenstein guitars. These instruments are over 60 years old, so components might have been replaced later. Warped necks, for example, were simply replaced with new ones. In this particular case, there's a theoretical possibility that a Soli guitar body was fitted with a (superior) Tellson neck. While I don't believe this to be the case here , nothing is put in stone since photos, IMHO, don't allow for a better assessment.


The general "identification game" of some German vintage guitars isn't my main focus, just a more or less amusing pastime. The benefit has been more in studying the diverse and varying construction methods and approaches of the old guitar makers with regard to quality and sound.

[niels]

Thank you very much Ol' Fret, this is very informative!

For decades, I've advocated for providing the most precise dimensions possible of the respective body. This also includes a look inside to assess the bracing and blocks, and of course, differentiating between carved, solid-pressed (with and without hand-finishing), and laminated spruce tops.

I tried measuring the body. But I think without the right tools it is hard to get measurements right because of the curved top and bottom.
Maybe it is better if I don't write down the measurements here... give or take a few mm is not exactly helping

here are some more pictures, one is the body straight from the front, the others are of the inside.





I can understand some of the frustration of not being able to pinpoint a certain maker.
In the accordion world it is the same story, often very hard to track down which maker etc. But understanding how this came about was a nice change of perspective for me. In the lovely town of Castelfidardo most of the famous brands are seated. The whole town was and still is invested in making those instruments. Lots of specialist home workers doing jobs for whoever needs it. Strong sense of community, benefitting all. Maybe post war German luthiers was comparable.

Re the neck: I don't have a magnet at home for checking the neck, will do soon.

thanks again Ol' Fret.

[Hammertone]

There are some specific visual "tells" that are handy when trying to identify which shop put together these archtops. The typically sparsely adorned, all-laminated or pressed-top mid-range models often provide few clues. Some are very easy to read, others, less so. IMO, those are Hanika, not Teller, f-holes.

As I was saying, there are some specific visual tells. F-holes are just one of them. The shape of the cutaway and manner in which the cutaway meets the neck is another. This is shown in a few photos of Tellsons and Solis in the aggregated information that Stefan Lob has put together over the years. Of course, only a few relevant photos are shown, and the guitar under discussion shows evidence of both styles. The good doctor has pointed out a few more of the "tells."

I concur that the neck is clearly a Kollitz, and all sorts of West German makers got necks from Kollitz, along with laminated and pressed plates. So, as mentioned, it's a bit of a mystery - not a great mystery, just a little one. Whether the neck blank came directly from Lang or through Kollitz is unanswerable. I love the connections between Hanika and Teller - very typical of the industry at the time, both in West Germany and East Germany. At the end of the day, it appears to be a nicely-made, mid-level @16"+ wide, laminated archtop, in clean condition. Many of these sound pretty good, typically with strong trebles and mids and not a lot of bass.

What's the scale length (measure from the top of the zero fret to the top of the 12th fret and multiply by two)?

[niels]

What's the scale length (measure from the top of the zero fret to the top of the 12th fret and multiply by two)?

hello Hammertone,
thanks for your input. I agree, mystery or not, what matters is it is a nice clean guitar and I like the sound
scale length is 63cm
[edit] oh and one measurement that I am sure of, the higth of the box is 8cm

[Ol' Fret]

Thank you very much Ol' Fret, this is very informative!


I tried measuring the body. But I think without the right tools it is hard to get measurements right because of the curved top and bottom.
Maybe it is better if I don't write down the measurements here... give or take a few mm is not exactly helping

here are some more pictures, one is the body straight from the front, the others are of the inside.





I can understand some of the frustration of not being able to pinpoint a certain maker.
In the accordion world it is the same story, often very hard to track down which maker etc. But understanding how this came about was a nice change of perspective for me. In the lovely town of Castelfidardo most of the famous brands are seated. The whole town was and still is invested in making those instruments. Lots of specialist home workers doing jobs for whoever needs it. Strong sense of community, benefitting all. Maybe post war German luthiers was comparable.

Re the neck: I don't have a magnet at home for checking the neck, will do soon.

thanks again Ol' Fret.

Niels, that looks like decent work. Btw., I think your guitar top could very well be pressed solid spruce.
One striking point of the lines around the end block is that they don't extend to the block, not forming a butt joint. I've noticed such "lining gaps" to be found in the violin world too, though sometimes violin makers even set the linings in the blocks. Maybe another "tell" of a particular workshop, maybe Tellson - sorry, I cannot tell for sure!

Perhaps your connection to the accordion world reveals a preference for that reddish-brown celluloid? The Castelfidardo craftsmen made, still are making, some fabulous accordions. Today, the use of celluloid is dwindling down. New accordions often show a natural wood finish - no more celluloid - but the old ones have that cool celluloid vintage look.


My criticism of the lack of willingness to provide reasonably accurate guitar dimensions does not refer to amateurs - everything is fine! However, I have less understanding when more or less reputable and established professional music and repair shops either don't provide any measurements to potential customers at all, or give something like: scale length 640 to 660mm, body 16 to 17", often accompanied by incorrect information about the type of the top and back (carved, pressed, laminated).

In this context, I found it interesting to learn from Mr. Campellone that the Gibson flagship archtops from the second half of the 20th century can show dimensional deviations of up to a quarter of an inch. German archtops from the same era don't show more deviation, despite the comparatively less sophisticated machinery available at the time.
Even Lang instruments only show deviations of a few millimeters. It's important to know, however, that Lang, as an exception in the guitar world, like the old Cremonese, used internal molds for his archtop bodies, not external ones. While external molds allow for far more dimensionally consistent manufacturing, internal molds, on the other hand, offer more flexibility.


Measuring guitars can be easy and fun with the right tool, like a caliper; here a used one from a former nationally owned GDR enterprise:

[niels]

Perhaps your connection to the accordion world reveals a preference for that reddish-brown celluloid?

Ha, maybe my taste has changed a bit for all the accordion glitter and sparkle

[gvurrdon]

Hi folks,

heads-up on a new publication, out 9th April in UK. No affiliation:

German Jazz Guitars: The Archtop Guitar in Post-War Central Europe by Cameron Brown & Stefan Lob


All the best,
Mick W

Thanks for mentioning this. It turns out that the Bodleian has a copy available for short-term loan so I was able to get hold of it yesterday. It mentions that the author's collection will be put on display in a new museum in Oxford and will be available for music faculty students (which, sadly, I am not) to play. I saw what looks like the museum when collecting the book, but it didn't appear to be open yet.

[niels]

From the mid-1950s onward, the typical Lang necks featured the well-dimensioned square steel reinforcements – their 2mm wall thickness used is no longer available in the EU today. It is quite possible that not only Glassl sourced the necks for his top models from Lang, but also Oskar Teller, whose consistently high-quality work Lang certainly had taken note of early on.
So, if this neck would be magnetic, best to test on the backside, chances are that it was supplied by Artur Lang.

No metal inside the neck...

Measurements:
Total length 105 cm
Body length 51.5 cm
Body hight 8 cm
Lower bout 40 cm
upper bout 30 cm
Scale length 63 cm
Nut width 4.3 cm

My guess is the top is solid wood going by the colour of the wood grain, inside corresponding with outside. Also I think the top is pressed not carved.

Thank you all for the info. This and a set of heavier strings make me feel i am getting to know the guitar better.

[niels]

At the risk of boring you good people with vague guitars here are pictures of an archtop I have had for quite some time now.

With all that I just learned I have taken a closer look. To my surprise the magnet did stick to the neck. That would explain why it is still straight even though the box itself does show its age.
Both top and bottom appear to be solid, and carved not pressed.

Not getting into the question whether it is Hopf or not as the tail piece says - all I know is I appreciate the thing for its singing voice.

Thanks again for all that I learn here.

[niels]

I mean if my dog liked the guitar who am i to disagree

[Major Seventh]

I mean if my dog liked the guitar who am i to disagree

I like the binding in the f-holes.

[niels]

I like the binding in the f-holes.

Me too... It was actually the only bit of binding that was still intact when I found it, the rest was either gone or desintegrating. It had been lying unproteted in an attic for who knows how many years. Thanks to a skillful and patient luthier it is now back to its former unassuming glory

[Ol' Fret]

Jeez, somewhere there must be a huge nest of obscure German vintage archtop guitars!

Well, many German guitar brands of the 1950s/60s used that headstock overlay. At first glance, the soundholes are reminiscent of Soli and Astro. Some Astro necks had steel reinforcement in such blanks supplied by Kollitz.
The fretboard inlays, in turn, are reminiscent of the German archtop-guitar doyen Franz Hirsch, who equipped many of his higher-quality carved pre-war Rogers with them. His students, such as his relatives, the Neubauers (Anton, August, and Helmut), also liked to use these inlays, as did another student: Gustav Glassl. Glassl, whom I have long called "the chameleon" of German, or German-speaking, archtop guitar making, used, among many other things, precisely these kinds of f-holes—I have held several of them in my hands that certainly did not come from Soli or Astro. And Glassl used such headstocks, volutes, and necks (which he mostly bought).

So, it's a Hopf guitar, except that to date, it hasn't been proven anywhere that Hopf ever actually made their own archtop guitars.


Niels, I think your dog has excellent hearing. I wouldn't dare to attribute this guitar to a specific workshop based on the information available here. Intuitively though, my first thought would be Gustav Glassl, for example, one of his Specials (De Luxe), which the large company Hopf probably marketed under that name. I could be wrong.
Personally, for years I've considered some of the high-quality Glassl models to be among the best made in Germany. Oh, all this ranking nonsense; let's leave that to another world! A good guitar is a good guitar, period! And yet, I'll continue to wonder why those interested in such vintage guitars don't simply try to acquire the (mostly) well-known flagship models from the usual German suspects. In terms of sound, the latter offer everything that American models have to offer, and to more and more ears, sometimes even significantly more, at a still realistic, affordable price.
If Hammertone, as he reported in a thread, had the neck of his Glassl "Craftsman" replaced by a well-known luthier, this can only be because he either acquired a model with a neck that was too narrow for him, or because Lang, due to health reasons, was no longer able to make and supply necks after around 1970, thus more or less incapacitating Glassl's high-end archtops, who sometimes had to resort to Framus-made multi-laminated (propeller) necks.


Here are some random links, just as brain food for the truly keen. AI could help with identification, at least for the foreseeable future. After that, the gates of human hell will open much wider due to the most severe manipulations of the algorithms used ...

- EXTREMELY RARE Vintage HOPF Original Acoustic Archtop Guitar, by GUSTAV GLASSL, w/Cutaway, Soft Case | Reverb
- 1960s Hopf Model 320S Spezial Deluxe natural
- Hopf spezial de luxe – Lacquercracks
- KAPITEL 01 FAMILIENGESCHICHTE – ENTSTEHUNG DER ROGER-GUITARREN – Roger Schlaggitarren
- Anton Neubauer Solist, 1955 - Vintage Guitars Webmuseum

[niels]

Thanks Ol' Fret...

Pleased to read your opinion on the guitar. I had already settled on never knowing for sure about the maker and I am fine with that, nevertheless I am grateful for all the colour and details that you share.

The picture with my dog Eef was taken when I had just found the guitar. It had no bridge, and no strings to speak of. What can be seen in the picture is new strings and a makeshift bridge . It was good enough for Eef (Sadly she is no longer with us...)

[niels]

I think I have been bitten by the determination bug so I have gone looking for details on Hopf Glassl guitars to compare them with mine. So far I have two hits .

Major 7th 's comment on the soundhole binding on my guitar had me checking soundhole bindings. I have seen quite a lot by now and the only ones matching the double white/tortoise binding is on blonde Hopf 320 S and some 319.

Another detail which i think is funny is on the back of the head stock. On my guitar one of the tuning strips sticks out on the topside just a tiny bit. I have always thought that was a bit odd.


On Luis Guitar Garage there are pictures of a Hopf 319 with that same oddity with the Tuning strip.
Shared album - Niels Kristensen - Google Photos

Original Hopf / Glassl 319 S 50er Jahre - Luis Guitar Garage

Chances must have increased by a couple of percents