Could be a different guitar then if it wasn’t from a private seller, which would imply it is a Rockwood model. I don’t really know as much about the Rockwood models but it does seem to be a bit of a departure from the usual fare.
Hi Phil, I did some investigative work ![]()
I took off the neck and had a look…
The neck is a very nice bit of maple and that skunk-stripe is real, that is it is a one-piece neck without a separate fretboard. But let’s take a closer look at the neck pocket…
…yes, that is MDF! Just about as far removed from a lovely one-piece maple neck as you can get. Now, don’t get me wrong - MDF is perfectly okay to make guitar bodies from, though the term “medium density fibreboard” feels misleading as I’ve never experienced high density fibreboard and the standout characteristic for me about MDF is it is heavy! I’ve a couple of little Encore guitars made from MDF and I love them, and both Hohner and Encore are able to finish them in a thick piano black coating which hides the humble origins.
Whilst I had the screwdrivers out I had a look at the pickup…
It’s a nice, loud clear single-coil, but it is rather microphonic and whilst the insides are all encased nicely with what looks like a central ceramic bar magnet like a Burns Tri-sonic, the baseplate glue has failed over the years and I expect that is the source of the microphonic sound.
Finally under the bridge…
…it’s all as expected and shows at least on the body that the bridge is original.
So I was kind of resigned to this to be a lovely Hohner neck on a cheaper donor body. A unique piece, but what sort of body could it have been?
Then I went back to the auction listing to see if that was “my” guitar. Two things stand out on closer inspection.
My guitar is missing a dot for the seventh fret position.
On the auction listing…
…the seventh fret dot is intact. Well, fair enough it could have fallen out at some point. But then I noticed the auction site has a good headstock photo…
https://content.easyliveauction.com/auctions/images_lots/F3B693A70227A5F6B9CE29988669C625_tho05/1100720805_PREVIEW.JPG (apologies auction site for linking here)
…and so do I…
It’s pretty subtle but if you look closely the wood that my guitar is made from has more figuring in than the one in the auction. The auction site guitar has a very nice blemish-free headstock. Notice in contrast the thin brown stripes to the right of the tuner closest to the top for example. They are not present in the auction site guitar.
So I think they are not the same guitar and there must be at least two guitars here in Blighty like this and that Hohner must have made more!
Where the others are…who knows? Hopefully this post will survive for a while in case anyone else acquires one!







