Hofner Colorama Special Solid

"I bought the guitar from a local music shop in Rugby, and according to the shop it had once belonged to one of the members of the 1960's band Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. When I bought it the guitar was an acoustic model and all original, except that the pick guard was missing. When I was a teenager I had always had a dream of owning one like the one Bert Weedon played on TV, but at the price they cost back then that's all it was.

I was never over-keen on the acoustic sound of archtop guitars so it was left hanging on a wall for a long time, but then a friend had a disaster with his Gibson Les Paul ( one of his band backed a Transit over it in a dark alley behind a theatre ) and he made me a present of the wreckage. The pickups survived intact and I fitted them on to the Hofner, along with the rest of the electrics. Later the non - dovetail neck joint glue gave way and I reshaped the heel so that the neck was angled back more like Gibson archtops and I also slimmed down the Hofner thick clumsy neck. It's now a bolt on adjustable neck joint, Just to complete the sacrilege, I sprayed the neck black as a contrast to the bird's eye maple back veneer.

I played it when I was in a country band and other guitarists played it and thought it looked amazing and was beautiful to play. The guitar has had a hard life as it got dropped one night and it hit the cast base of a mic stand which put a big dent in the laminated side below the lower bout. Because of the ply construction this was a difficult repair so I cut out the damaged area and fitted a treble boost unit with a self contained battery.

HOFNER COMMITTEE ACOUSTIC GUITAR WITH ADDED ELECTRICS

SERIAL No: 2826

COURTESY OF RICHARD NEWTON, UK:

RICHARD EXPLAINS ABOUT HIS GUITAR: