Hofner H500/1-CT Contemporary Series Violin Bass Guitar  

To start, this is a georgous bass.  The three piece neck and coloring are fantastic.  It looks like a perfect replica of the German model.  The bass has a volume control for both the neck and bridge pickups, as well as individual pickup on/off switches, and a rythm/solo switch.

The strings that come on it are horrible, and, most prefer to replace them with flatwounds.  I prefer the response of round wounds and get the tones I want from the controls and the amp.

The pickups sound great. But, you might as well stretch your strings over a railroad tie with pickups. as this is a solid body bass.  Get yourself a poster of a German Hofner and buy an Icon/Ignition for half the price. You won't be dissapointed!

The quality of construction and fit and finish of these has greatly improved in the last couple of years.

All that said, I owned 2 German Hofners back in the 60's and 70's, and they were great.  I have had a Rogue VB100 for about ten years, and it has been quite good.  This last Christmas I decided to get a Contemporary and called all over the San Francisco Bay area to find one.  Noone had one in stock. Then I remembered that a friend's bass player bought one on line recently.  I asked if I could come over and play it for a half hour, and wound up taking it home for a couple days to set up the intonation and neck relief.  The operation of the controls was a little confusing as well.  So, after setup, I pulled the control plate off to make sure the wiring was ok and was quite shocked to see that the "tone block", was almost a completely solid body with just a small amount of space under the controls.  This troubles me as Hofners are accoustic.   You cannot play this bass without an amp. I would have been greatly disappointed if I had located one new and traveled a distance to buy it and got it home and realized that you couldn't sit and just play it without pluging it into an amp. This bass weighs 6 lbs, exactly the same as the VB100.

What I'd really like to point out, is, that the Icon/Ignition is actually hollow, with a 3/4 in. sound block and asian pickups, and sounds great.  It doesn't have a zero fret! Big Deal!  I have 14 guitars and  basses, including a Martin, Gibson, Fenders and Epiphones.  None of them have a zero fret.

I rate this fairly high as it is a fine instrument and plays and sounds great. But, it should be advertised as a solid body Asian replica of the German instrument.

I bought the Icon/Ignition bass and it is great.  They all need intonation adjustment and decent strings.  If you really compare, I think you will see that the Icon/Ignition is a far better value.  I'm very glad that I couldn't find a new one in stock, because I probably would have bought it without realizing what it was, and been dissappointed  when I got home.    

This is a great instrument! A while back I decided that I wanted to own a Hofner style bass for my band, and so I got a crappy copy from some family member. After my music started getting a bit more serious I decided to upgrade to the real deal, and boy I was a smart purcase. The bass is lighter than I expected, and short scale, which makes it very easy to play. It sounds great and can deliver either a cool crunch or just some low mellow vibes. I love the black finish (which is what I got) it definatley gives a modern look to a vintage guitar. I would recomend this to anyone who wants a quality instrument for a little extra.

The bass is a great bass for the money. The only thing i'm dissapointed in is the knobs and switches, it dosn't cost that much if any to go the extra step and make it 100% original! Most people will switch these out anyway. The case is also cheaply constructed.