Arnold Hoyer Herr im Frack

[JUNY]

Hello everyone, and greetings from Barcelona!

I'm new in this forum, but I would like to ask you for advice. I'm the proud owner of a really pretty lady... well, probably I should say gentleman... It's a Herr im Frack model from A. Hoyer just like this one in the photo:




I would like to introduce my own guitar, but unfortunately she was in very bad conditions, and I'm trying to recover her.

Once I finish with the whole restoration I really want to install a magnetic pickup on this beauty, but I would like to avoid covering the 3rd central hole with a floating one, both for acoustic and cosmetic reasons. I know there're some german vintage lovers and experts in this forum, and at this point there's a bunch of questions and doubts I have to lay out here:

1. Would it be a good idea to install a bridge P90?
2. Is this 3rd central hole on such guitars really so relevant for its acoustic sound and tonality? Or is it just a volume issue?
3. Why were so many reputed german luthiers busy at that time designing quality 3 hole schlaggitarren?
4. Do you know any interesting electrification of such models? How does it sound like?
5. Do you guys know any really small floating pickup model that suits this old lady?

I would really appreciate your help in any of these questions, and I hope you're all safe and sound at home in these tough times we're living.

[neatomic]

congrats..cool guitar

i wouldnt cut into the body...nor would i block the round soundhole

i would look into dearmond rhythm chief or dearmond monkey on a stick...allows you to position the pickup at various spots on the guitar



luck

cheers

[Hammertone]

Hello everyone, and greetings from Barcelona!

...

...Once I finish with the whole restoration I really want to install a magnetic pickup on this beauty, but I would like to avoid covering the 3rd central hole with a floating one, both for acoustic and cosmetic reasons. ...
1. Would it be a good idea to install a bridge P90?
2. Is this 3rd central hole on such guitars really so relevant for its acoustic sound and tonality? Or is it just a volume issue?
3. Why were so many reputed german luthiers busy at that time designing quality 3 hole schlaggitarren?
4. Do you know any interesting electrification of such models? How does it sound like?
5. Do you guys know any really small floating pickup model that suits this old lady?...

1. Bad idea
2. Yes, it is relevant. But if you hang a small floating pickup over it, that will have only a minor affect on the acoustic volume
3. Because it's a great idea and looks cool.
4. A high-quality floating magnetic pickup will work best, IMO.
5. I recommend a vintage FUMA floating pickup.
They sound great and are:
-high-quality, well-shielded, single coil pickups very similar to Dearmond pickups in some ways.
-correct for the guitar
-not hard to find in Europe
-not expensive
-period-correct for the guitar

FUMA made OEM pickups for everyone, with their brand names on them - manufacturers as well as retailers. They also sold pickups under their own house label "Ideal." All the same pickups.

Here's one with a retailer's name:


Here's one with the Hoyer name: Same pickup:


more to come...

[Hammertone]

A few others. Schaller also made floaters. As did Star. Any of these would work just fine. They made individual pickups to be mounted to the end of the guitar neck, as well as pickguard assembies with pickups built-in, in one, two and three pickup arrays. These tend to be heavy and obtrusive. I prefer the single neck-mounted versions. They all sound great.

[JUNY]

Do you know the first type 510 from the 1955 Höfner catalogue? Have you ever listened to it? It is a really small pickup and I saw a modern Bass version of it. I don't know if the höfner guys are still making the same pickup for guitar, or even if this same bass one would work on my guitar...

[Hammertone]

I'll decode the Fact File table for you:
-303 Sch
-303 Gr
-503
-503 K
-505
-505
-507
-508
-512
-1505 Gr
-4000
All of these were made by FUMA in Berlin, have the same guts inside, and are identical to the pickups shown above in my post that are labelled "Musik-Barth", "Hoyer" and "Roger"

-101
-202 K
-502
-502 K
-Selmer 320
These are also by FUMA, essentially the same, but without adjustable pole pieces

-508
-509
-510 (metal face versions)
These are single coil pickups made for Hofner by Franz Pix

-510 bar pickup
-these appeared in rosewood housings with black/white laminated plastic caps, in black plastic housings, and (rarely) in white plastic housings.
-Original ones are crudely made, with no bobbins - the coil is wrapped in wax paper around a bobbin template, then removed and inserted in the cover. Five cylindrical magnets are inserted by hand and fixed in place with wax. Sometimes these pickups sound great. Often, they sound terrible.

-Hofner commissioned Shadow in Germany to make new guitar versions of these for the European-made reissue Club Guitars, and new bass versions of these for some European-made reissue basses. These are stacked humbuckers.
-Shadow also supplied versions of these pickups, made in their Chinese factory, for several Chinese-made versions of old Hofner guitars and basses.
-you can get a Shadow German-made guitar pickup like this and it would be very unobtrusive on a black guitar. It screws directly onto the top, with a small hole required to fish the cable through the top.
-The Shadow pickups are much better quality than the originals. The German ones are nicer than the Chinese ones.

Hofner commissioned Schaller to made a reproduction of the 511 twin coil pickup, which is essentially a mini-humbucker, starting in the late 1990s.
-These are available in mounts designed to be screwed to the end of the guitar neck (as is the case with the Chancellor, Jazzica, and New President, as well as available with a mount designed to be screwed directly onto the top of the guitar, used on a variety of European-made Hofners as well as Chinese "Contemporary" model Hofners.
-The bass "Staple pickup" version is used on most European-made Hofner basses as well as on most Chinese-made "Contemporary" basses.
-you can get a guitar pickup like this with a floating mount in nickel-plate or in gold-plate.
-these mini-humbuckers are much better quality than the originals. Schaller is no longer in the pickup business, and the tooling for these is now owned by Hofner, who have these pickups made exclusively for them.

[JUNY]

Thank you very much, guys. Your knowledge and ideas were really helpful to me.
As you said, Hammertone, a partial covering of the central soundhole can't be that harmful for the guitar sound: the fact is that there's plenty of scratchplates covering f-soundholes on so many guitars.
On the other hand, attaching a pickup anywhere in between the hole and the bridge would probably suppose a significant loss on bass tonalities, wouldn't it?

I think I'm slowly coming to the right solution.

[PAPAROYnas]

@hammertone

Thank you very much for sharing this useful information. I do no think there is a lot of digital documentation in the internet about these pickups. Thus any kind of information is important.

Do you know the model number of the pickup bellow? The Fact file does not have it listed and I cannot find any information anywhere, literally anywhere, about his specific pickup.

[Hammertone]

I do not know what kind of pickup it is. Perhaps one of the other German archtop aficionados has some more insight?

FUMA pickups tend to have adjustable screws with three slots, which create a distinctive six-pointed star shape in the screw head, as shown below. The pickup about which you are asking has very different-looking height-adjustment screws, but its physical arrangement and shape is very similar to a FUMA. Maybe it's a FUMA with some kind of plastic cover and changed screws. OTOH, Star used a lot of plastic in their pickup housings. Maybe it's a Star copy of a FUMA. Or it might be something else entirely! There were a couple of other pickup companies as well.