RAMSAY'S HOFNER COMMITTEES

COURTESY OF RAMSAY McKINNON, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND:

1954 HOFNER COMMITTEE ACOUSTIC:

One of the first Committees produced. Solid maple top with birds eye maple laminated sides and back. Five piece flamed maple/mahogany laminated neck. However, on such early examples, the fingerboard is predominantly rosewood, with ebony strips set in at each three piece mother of pearl inlaid fret location marker. No truss rod is fitted.

The headstock is the classic large Committee/Golden type, which was used up to 1963. The early instruments (up to about 1957) have a sort of inverted moustache inlay at the top centre of the headstock, and no HOFNER inlay. Machine heads are the three-on-a-plate classical guitar type, with the large diameter plastic sleeved barrels.

Hofner logo impressed into the body top just below the treble side of the bridge, which is the slotted ebony type with tuning wire used for the saddles. The bridge is the Harp type, and the scratchplate is a simple, clear, perspex type without edge detail or logo.

1957 HOFNER COMMITTEE ACOUSTIC:

The fingerboard is now ebony, with rosewood strips at the inlay locations. The headstock has gained the HOFNER inlay, but lost the moustache. Still no truss rod, which were fitted to those guitars made from 1960 onwards. The machine heads are now individual units with conventional unsleeved brass barrels, but the gears are exposed.

1961 HOFNER COMMITTEE ELECTRIC:

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Changes this time restricted to the pickups, and also the choice of standard width body or thinline. Oh! - and the machine heads now are the enclosed Van Ghent(?) type.

1963 HOFNER COMMITTEE ELECTRIC THINLINE:

1963 is when the big change hit the Committee - the small headstock. The same design of inlays and beautiful timbers (although the solid spruce tops started disappearing at about that time - replaced with laminated spruce), but not the same class. The electrics changed dramatically as well, from the classic Hofner rectangular control consul to white rotary controls (2 x Volume, 1 x Tone, and 1 x Solo/Rhythm), and a rather more practical three way pickup selector. The Committee was still a fine guitar, but not quite in the same league as the earlier models somehow! Not even the change from the harp tailpiece to the lyre type could make up for the loss of the big headstock.
The final major change to the Committee occurred in c1967 when the four rotary controls were reduced to three, in line with the other Hofner E2 guitars of that period.

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