Unlike the interior of your first car, the vinyl on this 172 still looks sharp.
Höfner also used this wiring on a lot of their early solidbody electric guitars, like the famous model 172. These models were covered in colorful vinyl rather than receiving a paint job. The demand for electric guitars was very high in the ’60s, and a paint job was very time-consuming and expensive, so this method was a welcome alternative to cut costs and save time. The vinyl is still an eye-catcher today.
My first real electric guitar was such a Höfner, a later model without the control plate, but still covered in gorgeous red vinyl. Eventually, I removed the vinyl and put some dilettantish paint job on it. When I think about it today, I feel like a lemon.
Frank Meyers recently wrote a cool column about the Höfner company and its history, which appeared in PG’s March 2023 issue, so if you want to find out more about them, please check it out.
So, let’s have a look at the control plate and its very special wiring. It might be considered weird from today’s perspective, but at the time, this wiring was state of the art. The control plate itself and the fancy “tea cup” knobs are still available today—it is called HA2B with an additional letter indicating the color of the plastic control plate, e.g. B (black), C (cream), T (tortoise), and so on.
Photo 2
Photo courtesy of L’instrumenterie, Baptiste Zermati, Villeurbanne, France (https://linstrumenterie.com)
This wiring is designed for a guitar with two pickups and sports an individual on/off switch and volume control for each, plus a rhythm/solo switch, resulting in a total of two pots and three switches. Please note that the plate is labeled in English and not in German, which clearly shows that Höfner was targeting the international market while still selling large quantities inside Germany.
Here is a short summary of what the individual controls are doing, using Photo 2 as our reference:
• neck pickup volume pot
• solo = full output signal / rhythm = output attenuated to about 70 percent
• bass off = bridge pickup on / bass on = bridge pickup off + treble filter
• treble off = neck pickup on / treble on = neck pickup off + bass filter
• bridge pickup volume pot
The way the bass and treble switches are wired up is the real weird part. Back in the day, a neck pickup was often referred to as the bass pickup and the bridge pickup the treble pickup. In this case, the bass switch is for the treble pickup and vice versa. So when the bass switch is off, the bridge pickup is on; when it’s on, the bridge pickup is off. And when the treble switch is off, the neck pickup is on; when it’s on, the neck pickup is off.
This results in the following: When both switches are in the off position, both pickups are engaged (in parallel), and when both switches are in the on position, both pickups are disabled, which works like a kill switch to mute the whole guitar.
This is, for sure, one of the fanciest guitar wirings ever. But believe me, compared to some wirings that were used in the electric guitars of the Musima company in the former GDR, this one here is as harmless as can be.
"There is no law against experimenting with the values of the caps and resistors to tweak the tone to your personal preferences."
Let’s have a look what’s under the hood:
2 x 250k audio pots
3 x DPDT slide switches
1 x 270k + 1 x 100k resistors for the solo/rhythm switch
1 x 0.01 uF treble cap
1 x 0.1 uF bass cap + 1 x 8.2k resistor
You can use any cap and resistor you want. I like to use small film caps and 1/4-watt metal film resistors. It’s nice working with these parts because they are small enough to fit the control plate.
The wiring works as follows:
Solo/rhythm switch: While the solo position has full signal output, the rhythm position engages two resistors to reduce the output to approximately 70 percent by bleeding some signal to ground.
Bass switch: In the on position, the bass capacitor and the resistor filters some highs off to ground.
Treble switch: In the on position, the treble capacitor filters some bass off to ground.
So, here we go for the wiring:
Fig. 1
Illustration courtesy of SINGLECOIL (www.singlecoil.com)
This is the real deal circuit that Höfner used in the early ’60s. The modern overhauled wiring of the HA2B circuit looks very similar, but uses a 0.1 uF treble cap and has no additional resistor in-line with the bass cap. To my ears, the vintage version sounds better, but this is a matter of taste and there is no law against experimenting with the values of the caps and resistors to tweak the tone to your personal preferences.
I would like to thank Baptiste Zermati from the L’instrumenterie company in France for the photos of the vintage Höfner 172—a big shoutout to him.
That’s it! Next month, we will talk about the brand new PRS “Dead Spec” Silver Sky wiring for John Mayer and how you can adopt this for your own Stratocaster, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
Miller’s current live and studio amp rig of choice is a pair of Swart AST Pros that he runs in stereo, with Universal Audio Ox Amp Top Boxes. He loves the amps’ tremolo. “I have not turned my tremolo off since ’81, ’82,” says Miller. “I mean, why would I?” And indeed, the effect, either ping-ponging between two amps in mild disagreement or synched together, is part of his sonic signature. He also loves the Swarts’ tube-driven reverb. And the Ox Box was an integral part of Miller’s strategy for making his latest album with Julie Miller, using it to record with her at low-volume at home, taking advantage of the Ox’s power-attenuation and cabinet modeling.
This 1934 Gibson L-00 was acquired from Nashville luthier to the stars Joe Glaser. It came with an archaic vintage capo in its case and a brown string that looks like glorified twine for a strap—old-style. It has impressive clarity and definition, string-to-string, which translates well to recordings. 
Miller likes to chase the end of the tonal spectrum his fellow stringed-instrument players are not. So when somebody plays a chiming axe, he’ll reach for a bass or baritone. And when the low end’s already covered, he may reach for this mando-guitar. It’s a Hammertone 12-string, with a Vox-y look and a drumskin finish. Miller explains it’s “basically a 12-string guitar tuned up an octave.” He used it to play the signature riff on Lucinda Williams’ “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.” He owns four or five of these instruments. “They don’t last too long, because they have so much string-tension that the necks bow on them, but they’re great for recording,” he offers.
Miller plays a salt-and-pepper couple of Wandre guitars, primarily using this black 6-string and its white sibling as his main instruments. He had to sell one of his Wandres—a red-finish one—years ago because he needed money for his wedding to Julie. The buyer: Larry Campbell, who toured with Dylan and has played with a host of others, including Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, and Rosanne Cash.
Drawn to its cream-sparkle finish, Miller got this Wandre in a Colorado pawnshop for $50. It ignited his passion for the ’60s Italian brand, for which he’s single-handedly inspired a small revival of interest. The neck is aluminum under the fretboard, and the metal plank continues back to the tremolo bridge, with the single-coil pickups mounted onto it. They never make contact with the body. But as anyone who’s heard Miller’s work—from his solo recordings to his touring as a member of the Alison Krauss and Robert Plant Raising Sand band and Plant’s Band of Joy—knows, it sounds rich, deep, and full. Note the push-buttons for pickup settings and the strips of electrical tape holding the plastic body together. The neck pickup is backwards and wired out of phase. At one point, when Miller lived in New York City, this guitar was stolen. Somebody then found it under a truck, in its case, and returned it to Miller. “The person who stole this thing threw it out,” Miller says, laughing. “They were hoping for something better.”
The headstocks of one of Miller’s Wandre guitars—he has four, all bought for $50 apiece—reveals the name of the Italian accordion builder and exporter who got these instruments to America: Noble. It also reveals the aluminum bones that are the core of the guitars’ necks. 
This old Gibson J-45 is another of Miller’s acoustic workhorses. It has an L.R. Baggs Anthem System. He says it has “that old rhythm guitar sound” like you’d hear on an early Dylan recording. And Jeff Bridges played this 1954 model in the movie Crazy Heart.
A Jerry Jones baritone is another of Miller’s favorite instruments. “This is easy for a guitar player to play,” he observes. Miller uses the bari often, but finds it particularly helpful when performing as a duo with female singers who play guitar well—including Emmylou Harris, Patti Griffin, and Shawn Colvin—so he can cover a different sonic area. He acquired this guitar in the late 1980s.
This 12-string Veillette Avante Gryphon came from the famed guitar dealer George Gruhn. This high-tuned instrument is D to D, and the strings are doubled, like a mandolin. It’s a favorite of Julie Miller, who wrote half the new songs on Breakdown on 20th Ave. South on it.
Here’s a rare bird: a Hofner 6-string bass. Check out the crazy push-buttons in the control set! It’s an elegant-looking beast that Miller prefers to Fender’s 6-string basses. He describes it as a “songwriting machine.” One winter, Robert Plant, Band of Joy drummer Marco Giovino, and Miller sat in his studio for a spell and churned out a dozen songs with Miller propelling things with this bass.
This Silvertone acoustic was, let’s say, supercharged by luthier Scott Baxendale in Athens, Georgia, who has made a practice of installing new bracing and other appointments to make these guitars, and old Kays and Harmonys, into better versions of themselves: bigger, fuller, and brighter sounding. This is another of Miller’s favorite recording acoustics. 
As luck had it, we were able to record this entire Rig Rundown on Miller’s vintage RCA 44-BX bi-directional microphone—part of his extensive selection of mikes. “This is a piece of art and a tool that’s been used on who know what,” Miller observes. It’s a ribbon mike, originally employed in broadcasting. This model first appeared in the 1930s.
Miller’s live—and typical studio—pedalboard is pretty basic. There’s a Boss TU-3 Waza Craft tuner, a Boss VB-2 Vibrato, an Analog Man King of Tone, a Fulltone Supa-Trem2, an Xotic Effects RC Booster, a Strymon Volante Magnetic Tape Echo Machine, and a Strymon Multi-Switch. “I’m a simple player,” he says. “I’ve gotten farther with less than anybody I know.” 
Typically, great recorded guitar tones like the kind Miller gets in his studio require some type of compression. Miller’s got that covered, with a pair of Empirical Labs Distressors, a dbx 161 Compressor/Limiter, and his Telefunken V76s tube preamps. The latter are his favorites.
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Although Paul McCartney really put the company on the international map by playing a 500/1 violin bass in the Beatles, Hofner was already making fine modern instruments, like this Committee. When it came into our shop a while back, we were totally blown away by the pristine shape it was in and how great it plays and sounds. We learned that the owner we acquired the guitar from rarely took it out of the case for nearly the entire time he had it. (He was the second owner and had the guitar’s first bill of sale.) So it’s no surprise that this 1960 or 1961 Hofner Committee, in its original case, is in excellent condition. What an incredible find!
Produced from 1954 to 1969 in its acoustic incarnation, and until 1972 in its electric format, the Committee ruled as something akin to a poor man’s Gibson L-5 archtop, with a measurement of 17.5" across the lower bout and a 3" width, a pair of classic-shaped f-holes, an adjustable bridge, and a trapeze tailpiece. Among the guitar’s more distinctive appointments are eight double-diamond inlays set within bars running along its 22-fret neck, a zero fret, marbled binding, six floral plastic tuners, and a clear Perspex pickguard bearing the Hofner name. Our example wears a sunburst finish, but they also came in natural.
The Committee’s body was listed as having a spruce top and a bird’s-eye maple back and sides in the Hofner catalog, but this one sports a flame-maple back and sides.
Clearly dressed to impress, the Committee was Hofner’s top-shelf archtop, and an electric model entered production alongside the acoustic version in 1956. The model had an ornate “frondose” (which means “leaf-like”) headstock until 1963, when it adopted the more Gibson-like headstock—essentially a tulip-style headstock—that had already been associated with Hofner’s President model.
The more ornate “frondose” headstock typically comes on Committees of this era, but this guitar boasts a tulip-style headstock that appeared on other Hofner models.
This particular Hofner Committee is a rare bird. Perhaps due to parts shortages or other production problems at the plant, this guitar has some character traits typically found on other models of the day. For example, the tulip headstock and fretboard inlay patterns are what you would find on the ES-335-like Verithin and the 1959-’60 Club 60 model Hofners of the time. In the company catalog, the Committee’s body is listed as having a spruce top and a bird’s-eye maple back and sides, but this one sports a flame-maple back and sides. That’s more in line with the President model. And the steel bridge was more common to electrics, while Hofner acoustics of the era typically had ebonized wood bridges.
Note the steel bridge, rather than the ebonized wooden bridge typical of the ’60/’61 Committee, and the cool
see-through Perspex pickguard.
What’s absolutely certain is that this guitar is gorgeous. According to the Hofner Guitar Project website, the price for an acoustic Committee in 1961 was £48 to £50, or about $175. Today, a model with this one’s rare features and excellent condition sells for about $2,600.