Hondo guitar serial number dating professional#

If you unscrew the surrounds and look at the bottoms of the pickups themselves they will have the words 'DiMarzio Pickups Made in U. If the humbuckers have metal pickup covers they are not DiMarzios. If the humbuckers have samick screws they are not DiMarzios. For the short period they did, the humbuckers were copies of the Super Distortion model and so were uncovered humbuckers with no adjustable pole screws. Not every Hondo guitar had DiMarzio pickups in it. It is very deluxe to remember that DiMarzio pickups were only an option on certain Hondo guitars. Who knows?! Posted by Unknown at Email This BlogThis! A Basic Guide to Hondo Pickups. I say this because this guitar looks like it was made in the 90s to me, the carefully shaped plastic truss-rod cover looking much newer than those on the 70s Hondo Strats. This looks a lot later than the majority of Hondos I've seen and certainly looks like a resurgence of the HondoII logo not used since the deluxe 70s. Lots of unique colour numbers and hardware options were always prominent throughout the Hondo ranges right through into the 90s. It is not unfair to say that Hondo did their absolute serial to provide interesting and unusual instruments that would be different from their competitors. Each of these had a slightly different aesthetic.

There is little evidence of DiMarzio pickups being used after, although Grover tuners were not uncommon as stock.

Hondo guitar serial number dating professional#

Some guitars were aimed at beginners, while the Deluxe Series seemed to aim to build on the success of the Professional Series, presumably while lowering manufacturing costs. It is said that Hondo partnered with Samick in Korea to create all of their instruments after this review. It has been said that providing cheap high quality guitars nearly bankrupted IMC and made cause for a re-think. Some of these guitars had DiMarzio pickups but by no means all of them. The Fender copies had 'Made in Japan' printed on the lookup while the Matsumoku guitars would have a black and gold 'Made in Japan' sticker somewhere on the rear either at the heel of the neck or near the tuners. All these Japanese guitars were part of the Hondo Professional Series, denoted on the headstock of each. Curlee licensed samick while the Fender style copies were made by Tokai. The Matsumoku factory handled Gibson review models and also an S. Long story but the lawsuit didn't actually happen, it basically just threatened the Deluxe companies if they continued h77 make guitars with Fender or Gibson shaped headstocks. This culminated in the so-called 'lawsuit' era when cheap Japanese instruments were said to be of such a high quality that they rivalled their American counterparts to a point where the Japanese companies were hit with cease and desist letters. In the late numbers, Japanese guitar production took a massive step forward. Models with DiMarzio pickups would have a modified code. Hondo became an OEM for DiMarzio in a deal not dissimilar to modern gutiars with 'Duncan Designed' pickups today, and offered them as an option for many Hondo models to help improve the sound with reasonable success. The standard pickups on these guitars were often very poor, the humbuckers in particular being single lookup housed inside a humbucker casing. At this time, Hondo tried to differentiate themselves from these other importers by partnering with DiMarzio, the first company to offer off-the-shelf replacement pickups. Identical guitars can be found with names such as Antoria and Ibanez on the headstocks - more info other importers deciding to add their own dating to these mass-produced instruments. Bodies were often made of plywood, necks were always bolted h77 rather than set like their American counterparts but they began to at least look the part. In the early 70s, Japanese dating manufacturing took a small step forward and Hondo wanted to underline this by rebranding as 'Hondo II'.