Unknown old German (?) jazz guitar

[Vignale]

Hi all, I'm new here and hope someone can help me further;
I own this guitar for decades and I’ve been trying to find out more about this guitar where it’s made (and what it’s worth) for a long time ;-)

It looks like a Höfner guitar made under licence (?)
But it has different “F” holes; I was not able to find any other guitars with these “F” holes.


I live in Holland where in that time we had some guitar factories, but these were not really good guitars
This one seems to have a good build quality
The only reference it has is the stamped number at the back of the headstock and the inked stamps inside the body.

I think once it had a floating pickup in the neck position: you can see the discoloration at that position and the little screw holes at the end of the neck
It also used to have a scratch-plate, at the side there it has little screw holes as well.


Btw: I only cleaned only one fret-position; there you can see the original colour of the fret-markers.


Thanks in advance,


Chris.

[citizenk74]

Hi all, I'm new here and hope someone can help me further;
I own this guitar for decades and I’ve been trying to find out more about this guitar where it’s made (and what it’s worth) for a long time ;-)

It looks like a Höfner guitar made under licence (?)
But it has different “F” holes; I was not able to find any other guitars with these “F” holes.


I live in Holland where in that time we had some guitar factories, but these were not really good guitars
This one seems to have a good build quality
The only reference it has is the stamped number at the back of the headstock and the inked stamps inside the body.

I think once it had a floating pickup in the neck position: you can see the discoloration at that position and the little screw holes at the end of the neck
It also used to have a scratch-plate, at the side there it has little screw holes as well.


Btw: I only cleaned only one fret-position; there you can see the original colour of the fret-markers.


Thanks in advance,


Chris.

A lively discussion will shortly ensue, I'm sure.

[Vignale]

Thanks K ;-)

I wonder, since I never could find any info about this one!

[cmajor9]

The guitar is a Melodija (sometimes spelled Melodiya), made in Slovenia. There isn’t a lot of info about these guitars on the Internet, but you can probably find a few listings with photos.

[Ol' Fret]

This guitar was not made in Germany!
It looks like a typical Melodija Menges instrument, made in the town of Menges, Slovenia, formerly Yugoslavia.

Edit: The "founder" of that company was an Austrian (accordion) instrument maker, Josef Fleiß (1906 - 1978). In 1945 his company was expropriated - the start of Melodija.

[Vignale]

WoW! Thanks a lot Cmaj9!

[Vignale]

WoW! thanks a lot Ol'fret!