I bought mine a while back, discovered at a local music store. It is unique in being a very light weight and comfortable instrument to play, easily half the weight of a normal solid body guitar, but with a wonderful organic, real instrument 'woody' sound like a real string bass. It is hollow inside and resembles a violin, hence the nickname "violin bass".

Further, it has a very comfortable narrow neck unlike most electric or acoustic basses, perfect for someone like myself with small hands, and can be played like a guitar. Perhaps this is the root of some of McCartney's very melodic bass lines- (but probably more due to the connections inside his brain). When purchased it had already been re-finished many years ago, so I decided to at last remove a rather unflattering cracked solid black coat it had worn, and let the real wood underneath be seen again, seen below after my work...

After removing the old finish and a few layers of thin laminate wood from the top, I put the strings back on to see if their was a change in sound. To my shocking surprise, I discovered that the over-thick layers of wood on the top were structurally important in holding up the bridge, and that the instrument was now unplayable. (The bridge is that horizontal piece just under the lower pickup on which the strings rest.)

This caused an immediate backwards click of my amygdala and a big feeling of "Oh gosh, what have I done...?"

The idea of ruining a collectors item, and a rather valuable instrument was a rather unpleasant scenario.

Fortunately, after about 25 minutes of repeated forward clicking effort (rather than total dispair), the frontal lobes worked out the silver lining. I merely inserted a soundpost inside the body under the bridge in exactly the same way a regular violin has a soundpost to support the bridge.

Life is always a challenge and full of unexpected surprises.
The trick is to keep your brain-cool till your amygdala FULLY clicks forward into frontal lobes TOTAL brain solution. Don't give up the click, no matter how bad things look.

A Few Technical Notes:
For those interested in this sort of thing, the old finish was removed rather quickly with a random orbital disc sander with a bit of paint remover just in the tight curved spots. Paint remover is best kept away from valuable instruments. An electric sander however was necessary, as the old re-finish was very thick and hard.

The laminate top and back consisted of VERY thin crossed layers of mahogany with dark glue in between each. Getting a nice entire piece of wood without glue showing was much more difficult on the front than on the back- which took about three attempts and going through that many layers of laminate. The grain of the wood on the back is vertical, and horizontal on the top (front). This process was particularly tricky on this instrument since both the top and back have ARCHED wood consisting of complex curves, rather than an easy to sand flat surface.

(Unfinished sanded instrument at right)

The neck and sides are of laminate maple or ash, but the old black finish had seeped deep into the pores which made it necessary to tint the finish to hide a few blemishes which were too deep to sand out on these parts of the instrument. The end result, however, made this a very wonderful silver lining: The contrasting sides and neck turned out a very rich color, with its own subtle varied shading, which further highlights the lighter top and back.

To color the sides and neck, I used earth pigment from the local art store. This is the same kind of material used to color oil paints, and allowed me to fine tune a color that would contrast, yet compliment the natural un-colored wood on the top and back. The headstock was left alone with the original "Hofner" decal, along with all of the original hardware on the rest of the instrument, including pickups, tuners, etc.

I settled on a violin varnish rather than a regular varnish, plastic, or laquer, since the violin varnish would retain a lot more flexibility than the other finishes. Often musical instruments show stress cracks in the finish because the wood flexes or expands and contracts over time and temperature and humidity changes. Violin varnish prevents this to a much greater extent than other finishes. Unfortunately, it takes about 3 weeks total curing time to get really hard, so I can't play the bass for a while even though the finish has been applied and "looks dry". The entire refinish job took about five days.

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