2013 Höfner New President - Sunburst - hand-built by Thomas Stuhlein and Dieter Fisch

[danishbacon]

Höfner New President Archtop Jazz guitar from 2012/2013, sunburst finish in good used condition,
This guitar was handmade and signed in Germany by masterbuilder Thomas Stühlein and has the added bonus of having had the carved top signed by Dieter Fischer who headed up the Höfner workshop at the time. Comes with the original deluxe hard case and paperwork - the case used to have a hygrometer which is gone.
It's a high-quality and highly regarded modern German Archtop with a solid carved European spruce top and flamed maple (anigree) laminate back and sides.
Ebony, 9.5" radius fingerboard with 22 frets, a 645mm (25.4") scale and a nut width of 43.6mm (1 23/32 ") without inlays.
The 16" body has two F- holes an ebony bridge and tailpiece, a floating Höfner Diamond Gold neck pickup and a volume and tone control on the ebony pickguard. The bridge is beautifully hand carved eboby.
The body and neck have black / white / black bindings and the traditional Höfner head has a lily and logo inlays and Schaller tuners.
Nitro-cellulose finish with some checking and a few small dings throughout. It's well set up, has a beautiful and loud acoustic tone and plays brilliantly plugged in. The frets have been crowned and levelled at some point and there are filing marks where someone rounded off the fret edges but this is not noticeable whilst playing, only on close inspection, which is why the guitar is set as good condition and not excellent. These retailed for around $5500 when they were last available.
£1850, based in South Wales UK, happy to post worldwide.

[Hammertone]

What a lovely New President!
I love the look of this one - no fretboard inlays, black binding, sunburst.
A few minor corrections that might be important to a buyer:
- the guitar has a 2013 serial number. Completed in 2013, not 2012;
- the rims and back plate not solid flamed maple. They are laminated anigree (an African hardwood that can sometimes effectively mimic flamed maple).

[danishbacon]

Thank you Hammertone, much appreciated. Some of the description/specs were lifted from the internet and I missed the error of the sides and back. Ad updated

It's unusual in that it has no fretboard inlays!

[Hammertone]

In 2012 and 2013, several Höfner New Presidents were made with no inlays on their fretboards. Höfner also made a handful of New Presidents, for Hutchins, with no inlays on their fretboards and slightly different trim, labelled as "Buckingham" models.

Several Höfner New Presidents were also made during this time with large perloid block inlays that extended to the binding on either side, a throwback to a '50s and '60s style seen on the Model 457 and other models of that period.

During the same time period, the Chancellor (carved top/back 17") and the President Thinline (laminated w/a block) also lost their rectangular block mother-of-pearl inlays. Afterwards, all Chancellors and most Thin Presidents had with fretboards with no inlays.

All of these guitars had identical 22 fret necks, with ebony fretboards, from the same supplier. Jazzicas were not affected by this because they have 24 fret necks. Jazzica fretboards continued to have mother-of-pearl block inlays until they were discontinued @2019.

This is right around the time that Höfner slowed down on German-built archtops, producing fewer and fewer of them year after year, eventually stopping production of all European-built archtops by @2020.

[danishbacon]

Excellent info, thank you! Could you shed some light on the top having been signed by Dieter and the guitar itself being signed by Thomas?

Thanks

[Fear the Reaper]

Wow!!!!!

Höfner New President Archtop Jazz guitar from 2012/2013, sunburst finish in good used condition,
This guitar was handmade and signed in Germany by masterbuilder Thomas Stühlein and has the added bonus of having had the carved top signed by Dieter Fischer who headed up the Höfner workshop at the time. Comes with the original deluxe hard case and paperwork - the case used to have a hygrometer which is gone.
It's a high-quality and highly regarded modern German Archtop with a solid carved European spruce top and flamed maple (anigree) laminate back and sides.
Ebony, 9.5" radius fingerboard with 22 frets, a 645mm (25.4") scale and a nut width of 43.6mm (1 23/32 ") without inlays.
The 16" body has two F- holes an ebony bridge and tailpiece, a floating Höfner Diamond Gold neck pickup and a volume and tone control on the ebony pickguard. The bridge is beautifully hand carved eboby.
The body and neck have black / white / black bindings and the traditional Höfner head has a lily and logo inlays and Schaller tuners.
Nitro-cellulose finish with some checking and a few small dings throughout. It's well set up, has a beautiful and loud acoustic tone and plays brilliantly plugged in. The frets have been crowned and levelled at some point and there are filing marks where someone rounded off the fret edges but this is not noticeable whilst playing, only on close inspection, which is why the guitar is set as good condition and not excellent. These retailed for around $5500 when they were last available.
£1850, based in South Wales UK, happy to post worldwide.

[Hammertone]

Excellent info, thank you! Could you shed some light on the top having been signed by Dieter and the guitar itself being signed by Thomas?...

Höfner guitars are team-built. The label is signed by the last person in the chain. in the "modern" Höfner period (@1998 - 2020) labels were signed by Dieter Fischer, then Hubert Kaa, then Thomas Stuhlein.

Fischer was the most senior guy, who worked on finessing the guitars. He was close to retirement by 2012, and did the more sexy stuff like fitting the top brace. He was an old-school dude in some ways, and kind of did his own thing by the end of his time there - no surprise to see his signature hidden in that spot.

[2bornot2bop]

Who is Hutchins? Not Jim Hutchins of Gibson?

[Hammertone]

Who is Hutchins? Not Jim Hutchins of Gibson?

Hutchins is Gary Hutchins, one of the funnier people that I have had the pleasure of meeting in the music business. He's in the UK.
Here: HOME | Hutchinsguitarsuk

[Prossi@cozen.com]

How were the tops carved?

[Hammertone]

How were the tops carved?

-a master top plate was hand carved;
-casts were made of the inner and outer surfaces of the plate;
-a very cool, old machine was used to rough-carve top plates, using the casts as a guide;
-final carving, scraping and sanding for each top plate was done by hand.

Similar to the method for making carved archtop guitar plates used by Gibson, Campellone and a few others as well.

[danishbacon]

Thanks for all the valuable info Hammertone

I have found out that this guitar was previously owned by Paul Sayer, one of the founding members of The Temperance Movement and currently guitarist for James Blunt.

[danishbacon]

Now sold. Thanks all