I already own other Höfners, old and new, so I'm a bit of a Höfner fan. This one had some issues though, and it wasn't quite as nice out of the box as other Höfners I've purchased in recent years.
I should probably also mention that I'm a luthier. I make a living repairing/building guitars which means I have the experience to fix the issues mentioned below. Most guitar bass players don't have these skills or the right tools to fix these problems. Then you would basically have the choice between returning the instrument for a refund, or to pay a guitar workshop to make it playable.
Positives:
-It looks absolutely gorgeous! Flawless finish. The color looks very classy, much nicer than on the brighter, cheaper Ignition series.
-Wonderful tone! My personal favorite is with both pickups in the "off" position (which by Höfner's logic means they're both actually switched on...) and solo the neck pickup using the volume knobs.
-The semi-hollow construcion seems to improve the sustain ever so slightly and works better with a loud band than vintage Höfners (in my experience anyway).
Negatives:
-The setup out of the box was appalling. The bass was set up with the action (measured at the 12th fret) around 3,5 mm at all strings. It was practically unplayable.
-When the action was lowered to a more normal action (from 2 mm at the treble side to around 2,5 mm at the bass side) I got severe fret buzz at several frets. It turned out that several frets weren't seated properly. I hammered them down, but still got some fret buzz. I had to level, crown and polish the frets to make this bass playable with normal action. This really isn't acceptable in this price range. Unfortunately this isn't exactly uncommon either. I see this with more and more guitars/basses these days. If I didn't have the experience to fix this myself, I would have returned it for a refund. It was THAT bad.
-The zero fret was also a bit on the high side for my liking. But again: This isn't a specific issue with Höfners, but something I see with zero-fret instruments from other manufacturers too. Filing a zero fret to a nice, playable height can be slightly more challenging than filing a standard nut, so this is something to be aware of.
Finally, I have to say that Höfner would probably sell a lot more of these basses if they had started using standard bass tuners. With the tiny "guitar" tuners Höfner use, your choice of strings will be extremely limited. If these basses could be used with standard roundwound strings, they would be a LOT more versatile, and probably a lot more popular too.
After sorting out the issues mentioned above the bass plays and sounds great. But out of the box it wasn't really playable, unless you like a very high action.
I hope this was a case of poor luck, and that Höfner's quality control hasn't gone downhill. Other Höfners I've purchased in recent years were far better out of the box.
