So I picked up this guitar from an estate sale a few months back, and decided to look into it a bit and see if I can find any info on it. And there’s a whole lot of nothing. Well, kinda.
The sticker inside has it labeled as a Hohner Hg-25, however the only one I can find photos of online has a different headstock than this one. As well as a completely different style of label (as in it’s newer/older, which probably doesn’t mean much). On top of that the HG-25 on mine appears to be written in with pen, so I suspect it’s been mislabeled possibly. This forum came up while I was digging so I thought I’d try my luck here.
I’ve included one photo, because I’ve got a new account it’ll only let me put one attachment in. I’ll post some more if I can below.
I don’t think it’s mislabelled, it is an HG-25 from the late 1970s or early 1980s. The stamped numbers are the date but part of the year isn’t legible or visible, so it’s either August 1978 or August 198x (where x is either 0, 1, 2 or 3 - likely one of the lower ones).
It’s one of the higher spec classical guitars in the range at the time. Hohner guitar production in Japan was overseen by a company called Moridaira, who made some guitars but subcontracted a lot of them. The factory who made this were probably given the labels but were making the guitars in small enough numbers that they just wrote the model rather than setting up a stamp for it. The factory being used changed over time, which probably accounts for the variations. Hohner also used at least four label designs in this period, with no obvious chronology.
This guitar is in the 1978 catalogue, it’s the one in the middle.
Ahh I see. Thank you so much! Like I said I could hardly find anything on it online, there is/was one for sale on reverb but it had a stamped label, which only added to my confusion as I’d never heard of a larger company just writing it in pen. But that makes a lot more sense now. Thanks again!
They made this particular model for a long time. You will find them with the same model number and similar spec but with the Contessa brand on the label. Contessa was a brand used by Hohner from the 1960s through to the mid 1970s, before they started primarily using Hohner on the label/headstock.
I don’t think the spec on the catalogue page even matches the guitar displayed. The text implies the back is rosewood (confusing use of commas) but the picture looks like macassar ebony.
I believe the one I saw for sale was listed as having a macassar ebony back. (Also in looking at it again I realized that one does have the same engraved(?) headstock so I’ve no idea where I got the idea it was different from.) The ad there does seem to have the same type of back as mine as opposed to rosewood. While I’m not the most experienced by any means, I do have some things labeled as having rosewood that are nothing like that grain pattern. I wonder why it’s labeled that way.
It’s possible it had been made with rosewood back and sides previously and then switched to ebony, but nobody told the copywriter. The history of Hohner guitars contains a long tail of exceptions and oddities, which is what keeps it interesting.
