Hofner Verithin John Stowell 2006

Hofner Verithin John Stowell Signature 2006

Made in Germany

Serial Number E06258

A rather rare and very special Hofner Verithin JS Signature. Superb craftsmanship, the guitar has a lovely balance and weight, lovely clean woody jazz tones come naturally out of it! Original hardcase with humidity controls, no dings, just a couple of light marks on the top, photographed as best we can, nothing that detracts from a very good Jazz guitar that is exceptional value for money..

John Stowell, is a famous American jazz guitarist and guitar teacher. Rob Olsen bumped into him in 2000, and they began discussing Hӧfner guitars. John explained that he liked the looks of the Jazzica, but felt that it was too large an instrument for him. Rob showed him a Verythin, and he liked it but asked if it could be made to look more like the Jazzica. So, Rob put the problem back to Hagenau and after a few ideas had been passed around, the JS Signature model was born.

The design that John and Hӧfner came up with comprised of a Verythin Classic, with its laminated spruce top and (maybe strangely for a jazz guitar) a center spruce sustain block, but with a single mini-humbucker pickup located at the neck. On earlier examples of the model, this pickup was mounted directly onto the top of the body top, whereas on later guitars it had a floating pickup suspended from the end of the fingerboard. Single body mounted volume and tone controls were fitted, and a “Clear Contour” circuit was controlled by the rotary tone control.

The body edge purfling of the Classic was retained, as was the mother-of-pearl block fretmarker inlays in the ebony fingerboard and the gold plated hardware, but a New President style ebony faced tailpiece and ebony pickguard were also included in the package. Two finishes were available – the nitrocellulose natural blonde or the brown violin varnish.

The model proved to be popular, with Ringo Starr and Paul Carrack both being owners of violin-varnished “JS” Signatures. Other Jazz guitarists to use the model include Sid Jacobs and Jimmy Wyble.

The first examples were shipped in December 2001, and from then steadily on until 2010, with a total of around 150 being produced. This is all rather odd, as the JS didn’t appear in the general Hӧfner catalogues until 2004 and the price list until 2005, when it was described as being “New”! A check on the shipping destinations prior to 2005 shows that these guitars were almost exclusively being sent to the US, and so it would appear that the US distribution organisation at the time had got right behind the model from its inception in the days of Boosey & Hawkes.