1960s Hopf Telstar Standard

In white with black steel pickguard and brass “Hopf” badge. Solidbody electric guitar made in Wehen near Wiesbaden in West Germany, by Hopf, a family company with deep roots in violin-making who moved into electric guitar production in the 1950s and 1960s after the Second World War. Clearly designed to compete with Fender’s offset-body Jazzmaster and Jaguar guitars, the Telstar Standard also features an offset body, bolt-on neck, two pickups, and very elaborate electronics with two separate tone caps that can be accessed, an M/R switch (monophonie/rhythmus is our best guess – solo and rhythm), a treble switch that bypasses everything except the bridge pickup and its separate volume control, and a 3-way pickup selector where curiously the setting for both pickups is not in the middle. It’s nothing if not versatile. The guitar also sports a sliding mute and a tremolo system with its original arm, very similar in principle to the Jazzmaster/Jaguar system. The neck is (incredibly sturdy) laminated maple with a six-on-a-side headstock and tuners that are housed in what appear to be potentiometer housings, a rosewood fingerboard with small dot inlays on the bass side and has a scale length of 24 & 7/8”, a nut width of 1 & 3/4”, and a radius of 15”, and has a zero fret, a common feature on many German guitars of the period. The profile is actually quite large. The body appears to be poplar. Overall the design could be described as “Verrücktes Gekritzel” which is German for “whackadoodle”. You will almost certainly be the only person on your block (or perhaps in your state or even nation) that has one. A peculiar but really neat guitar, plays very well and sounds great, functions well, and comes in a nice Roadrunner hard case.