I’ve owned this guitar since 84/85 I think. Recent research shows it was maybe made by Hohner. It has ARBOR on the front and rear of the tuning head, tuning pegs and burned inside; “Hand Crafted - Arbor - Made in Japan”. The burned in serial looks like P13058. It just seems to get better over the years. Any info on these?
Joe
SW Washington
Hi Joe. I am new to this group. I have quite a few Hohner guitars and one Arbor acoustic (D20N dreadnought). Could you send more pictures. I may be able to help.
I have many other photos but the site won’t me post more than 1. I just was pulling out the Arbor and went bck to reearching it when I found your post. My email is jdhreiss@gmail.com if you’re still out there!
Joe Reiss
The Arbor name is very confusing because it was used for vastly different purposes within Hohner, and also by another contemporary but probably unconnected company.
The first use is in the late 1970s when the 900 series Japanese made acoustics were introduced. For the most part these used aged woods, solid tops, and maple binding and position markers - all the wood basically. So they called them the Hohner Arbor Series. These are sought after guitars now.
In the mid 1980s when production had moved to Korea, Hohner Arbor Series was reused as branding for budget electrics and acoustics aimed primarily at the UK market as far as I can tell.
At the same time (1983 - 1985), there was a US company making (or having made for them) electric and acoustic guitars under the Arbor name. The logo was kind of similar to Hohner’s but on acoustics the name was horizontal on the headstock with an A symbol underneath. I don’t believe these are anything to do with Hohner although they sometimes get sold with the association.
And then there’s yours with the vertical logo, and a few other similar ones. They all seem to be acoustics. I’ve seen a G599 made in Korea, which is a Hohner model number and the label looks identical to a Hohner except it says Arbor. There’s the D20N (natural?) mentioned above and a D20M (mahogany) I’ve seen one photo of. They don’t match any contemporary Hohner model numbers but have the same vertical logo. Yours is interesting because it’s a G910 which is one of the models in the original Hohner Arbor Series. I can’t really see the detail in your photo but it doesn’t look like the neck and headstock have maple binding, which is a signature feature of the original G910.
It’s hard to work out a pattern because they’re a bit all over the place. Not very many examples. Some Japan, some Korea. Some Hohner model numbers, some not. My best guess is that it’s a thing that was being tried in the early 1980s when the Japanese production was coming to an end but the Hohner Professional range (arguably the heyday of Hohner guitar production) hadn’t yet been conceived. Or maybe it was specifically aimed at protecting the Arbor name from the other company.
The third possibility of course is that Hohner were making versions of their guitars for the other Arbor. That could actually be the most likely.
