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Up | Home | Contact Us | Liobians' Forum     The Höfner 500/1 Bass

A Series of WWW Pages Compiled and Published by John Snelson from 1996 ©     

The Karl Höfner GmbH company built the Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass guitar, the first design of the short-scale guitar being developed by Walter Höfner in 1955. The 500/1 is an electrically amplified semi-acoustic bass, very light and easy to play with a very rich and warm tone.

The body was fashioned in the shape of a double bass, so it is derived as an amplified, semi acoustic bass - rather than an electric violin with bass strings.

Paul McCartney, a left handed musician, saw the violin shaped bass in the window of Steinway's music shop in Hamburg, in 1961. He ordered a new guitar from Steinway's after ascertaining that due to its symmetrical shape, they could probably make a special for him, with the control switches positioned on the opposite side, suitable for a left-hander.

It has been suggested that the bass was bought by McCartney in 1961 "because of the instrument's symmetry, and McCartney could play left-handed without the bass "looking daft" as he put it." I am sure this was true - however, he did not buy the guitar he saw in the window, as that was a right-handed bass. He ordered a bass to be customised for him, by shifting the pickguard and the hole for the electronics to the opposite side of the body. The '61 500/1 bass McCartney commissioned, ordered and played was a left-handed model, as can be seen by the photographs of the day. He ordered it especially from Steinway.

There was no distribution of this bass into the United Kingdom until 1963, when Selmer started imports capitalising on its new found fame. Boosey & Hawkes bought Karl Höfner GmbH in 1994. In 2003, the Höfner business became part of the Music Group Company. In January 2005, The Music Group sold Höfner to Klaus Schöller, who had been the General Manager of Höfner for many years. Höfner is now owned and operated by someone who has been intimately involved with its operations for years.

A full history of the 500/1 Bass can be found in "Höfner Violin 'Beatle' Bass" by Joe Dunn, ISBN: 974-9863-21-6, first Published 1996 by River Books in conjunction with New Cavendish Books and at the Höfner Web Site. An excellent write-up can be found in the authoritative "Beatles Gear" by Andy Babiuk, Published 2001 by Backbeat Books, ISBN 0-87930-662-9.