I found lately an amazing Japanese website about German vintage guitars, Jazzgitarren, and it's absolutely baffling. A complete unknown part of modern guitar history is suddenly revealed to me.
So far I just believed (more or less) in the widely accepted but limited view of electric guitar history - Gibson invented the archtop mandolin then guitar then added pickups then made the semi-hollow then the Les Paul solid body. And then Fender found out how to make a guitar from a plank, and then the Japaneses started to copy American guitars and the Italians had a burst of creativity (this I still have to understand how and why)...
But all these German guitars were completely out of the picture, and they are so beautiful, so creative that I can't understand how I never heard of them before - though I've been curious about European vintage guitars for a while.
Anyway, I'm happy to share this discovery here. The Jazzgitarren website shows the early production (50s, 60s) of most famous German brands such as Höfner, Framus, Hoyer or Dynacord, and many more, both from BRD and DDR. I extracted a few pictures of of these guitars - left to right and up to down: Musima Record, Neubauer Thinline, Hoyer Bianka, Hopf Explorer Standard, Shadow Violin Guitar, Höfner 175. Your can really spend a few hours on this site, believe me!
There is something similar for Italian vintage guitars, the quite famous fetishguitars.com.
So far I just believed (more or less) in the widely accepted but limited view of electric guitar history - Gibson invented the archtop mandolin then guitar then added pickups then made the semi-hollow then the Les Paul solid body. And then Fender found out how to make a guitar from a plank, and then the Japaneses started to copy American guitars and the Italians had a burst of creativity (this I still have to understand how and why)...
But all these German guitars were completely out of the picture, and they are so beautiful, so creative that I can't understand how I never heard of them before - though I've been curious about European vintage guitars for a while.
Anyway, I'm happy to share this discovery here. The Jazzgitarren website shows the early production (50s, 60s) of most famous German brands such as Höfner, Framus, Hoyer or Dynacord, and many more, both from BRD and DDR. I extracted a few pictures of of these guitars - left to right and up to down: Musima Record, Neubauer Thinline, Hoyer Bianka, Hopf Explorer Standard, Shadow Violin Guitar, Höfner 175. Your can really spend a few hours on this site, believe me!
There is something similar for Italian vintage guitars, the quite famous fetishguitars.com.
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