Hohner HS40

I bought this guitar from Oxon Hill Music in Oxon Hill Maryland (USA). I'm an employee and I paid a lot less than retail. I'm not at liberty to disclose the exact amount. The MSRP is $899 w/o hsc.

After visiting about a half-cozen shops in the Washington DC metropolitan area, trying out many different makes/models, I selected the Hohner HS 40 as the instrument best meeting my needs for now and the foreseeable future.

I've been playing guitar for about 35 years, and I wanted a *jazz* guitar to augment my Les Paul Recorder. The LPR has been my only guitar for 25 years and does a lot of things well, and, it was time for an addition to the fleet of one. I knew you'd understand.

I like the look and feel of this guitar - I played several, well, actually quite a few archtop acoustic/electrics with retail prices from about $329 to $2500, the Hohner HS 40 had the best combination of feel and tone of all of them.

Overall I like the fit and finish, though you, Oh gentle reader, will see a few negative comments in the following section.

The guitar is quite attractive in the natural blonde finish, the curly maple back and sides are well finished as is the top. The binding on the insides of the F-holes is a nice touch on a guitar in this price range. The frets are properly seated and finished on the ends (no metal overhanging the binding to cut the fingers), and the bridge came properly set for good intonation right out of the box. I think that the tune-o-matic style bridge mounted into the central block serves to increase the sustain over having a floating bridge on a semi-hollow body like this guitar.

There are a few little details that, had Hohner gotten them right, would have made a really good guitar a great guitar. The pickguard rattles; now this is no big deal, except that first the player has to identify the rattle, then fix it (I used some small pieces of sheet cork to isolate the pickguard from the mounting screws, and that fixed it). The metal tailpiece (same style as used on the Joe Pass Epiphone) rattles. Now this took longer to isolate and fix, and involved rebending the tailpiece scroll-work a little bit. The nut ends weren't flush with the edge of the neck. This is downright inexcusable - fortunately, it's also easy to fix with a bit of sandpaper and reasonable care. The tuners are adequate but not great; I'll probably change them out soon.

OK, the factory strings are wimpy and suck; cut them off and put on some .011's (at least)

This is a Korean-manufactured semi-hollow body single cutaway. If I had to guess, I'd say it was made by Samick (as are ~80% of the world's guitars), but I don't have to guess, so I won't.

The guitar has a laminated top, curly maple sides and back, and is approximately the size of both the Epiphone Joe Pass and Gibson Howard Roberts.

Standard two humbocking pickups, with standard layout of p/u switch and vol/tone controls; the p/u switch is on the lower side like the Gibson Byrdland, not high like a Les Paul.

The neck is made with two pieces of maple (?) spliced between the nut and second fret much like a flemenco neck; it's not my first choice for neck construction, and, so far I don't see any reason why it shouldn't last the life of the guitar - after all, it's warranteed to. The neck is thin (front-to-back) and FAST, which was one of the things that attracted me to this guitar

The 20-fret bound rosewood fingerboard has a pleasant curve to it (no, I haven't measured it), and the block inlays are well executed. At some point I may run out of frets at the high end, though I rather doubt it.



Would I pay $899 for this guitar? No, but then, in this day and age, no one pays retail, so there's no need to.

Would I replace this guitar if I lost it? YES,Immediately!

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com