Hi, I would like to express a concern regarding the lack of a complete archive of discontinued Hohner guitar and bass catalogs on the official website.
Many musicians, collectors, and technicians rely on original catalogs as references for identifying models, specifications, and production years. Unfortunately, there are not available.
At the same time, third-party websites such as vintaxe.com are charging users (often $10 or more) to access these same catalogs, even though they did not create or originally distribute them. (Not fair). This results in external parties profiting from Hohner’s historical material, which was originally promotional and freely available.
Having an official, complete archive of discontinued guitar and bass catalogs (and other instruments too) would greatly benefit the community, preserve Hohner’s legacy, and reduce reliance on paid third-party sources.
I hope Hohner will consider making this material officially accessible for the benefit of its users and the wider community.
Obviously that would be wonderful. But even if Hohner Germany had kept meticulous archives (which I think it’s clear they didn’t), a lot of the catalogues were issued by regional companies that no longer exist such as M. Hohner Inc/Hohner US and M. Hohner Ltd/Hohner UK.
I am curious what Hohner Service have available to them though, maybe Steve can tell us.
Your suggestion certainly makes sense to me. A big question would be, how much of this material does the Hohner company still have in its possession? I’ve passed the request on to the Marketing and Service departments and will let you know how they respond,
I’ve asked them, but as you say the record is patchy and many catalogues were issued by national distributors rather than Trossingen. We’ll see how they respond.
Fingers crossed, I hope so! It would be great to learn more about accordions, basses, and guitars. I live in Colombia, and Hohner is a brand deeply rooted in our musical culture—its accordions and basses are legendary here. They know it.
They sent me a bunch of catalogues covering the period from 2003 - 2013. But many of the instruments discussed on this forum date from earlier periods and I’m not sure whether posting this material here is the best way to proceed. Any comments?
hit it. they might work with some contemporanean instruments, better than nothing. would be nice if they could provide later in time with 90s and 80s catalogs.
Totally agree. I discussed this with Product Management, they understand the situation and see the value of making this material available to users. Unfortunately the documentation of historical Hohner instruments has often been neglected and the company has no central archive of older catalogues. Also they would need to create a suitable online space to put the stuff, but are short staffed, so it’s not simple to assign somebody to this task. I’ll stay on it and see what happens.
I’ve just been identifying an EBCG model for somebody, which is in the 2006 catalogue. So there absolutely is value in making the later catalogues public if you can.