Former Beatle has played H\u00f6fner\u2019s iconic \u201cviolin bass\u201d since 1961<\/p>\n
\n\tClose to 70 years after German instrument company H\u00f6fner started selling an electric bass that looked like a violin, the company has filed for bankruptcy<\/a>. The news has hit Paul McCartney<\/a>, who has made the H\u00f6fner 500\/1 his signature instrument, especially hard. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt is very sad to see H\u00f6fner go out of business,\u201d McCartney wrote on Instagram. \u201cThey have been making instruments for over 100 years, and I bought my first H\u00f6fner bass in the Sixties. I have loved it ever since. It\u2019s a wonderful instrument to play: lightweight, and it encourages me to play quite freely. It also offers pleasing variations in tone that I enjoy. So commiserations to everyone at H\u00f6fner, and thank you for all your help over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe Beatles<\/a>\u2018 association with H\u00f6fner instruments goes back to their Quarrymen days. George Harrison\u2019s brother Harry taught him guitar chords on a H\u00f6fner Committee and later played a H\u00f6fner President and a H\u00f6fner Club 40. John Lennon\u2019s first \u201cgood\u201d guitar, according to Mark Lewisohn\u2019s Beatles biography Tune In, was also a Club 40. The band\u2019s original bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, started playing a H\u00f6fner President 333, which looked similar to the instrument McCartney would later make famous, in 1960. During times when Sutcliffe wasn\u2019t around, McCartney would pick up the 333 and play it upside down, as he is left-handed.<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n \n\tMcCartney purchased his first H\u00f6fner 500\/1 in Hamburg at a Steinway & Sons shop in 1961. He was able to get a left-handed instrument on short order, according to Tune In, because H\u00f6fner was based in Germany. The instrument cost him a little less than \u00a331. H\u00f6fner would later give McCartney another left-handed \u201cViolin bass\u201d in 1963 after the band broke into the mainstream.<\/p>\n \n\tSomebody stole the original 500\/1 from the back of a van in London on Oct. 10, 1972. Through the help of a grassroots campaign called\u00a0\u201cThe Lost Bass Project,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0the thief was identified, and the bass was returned to McCartney in 2024. The instrument\u2019s history will be the focus of an upcoming documentary<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Beatle has played H\u00f6fner\u2019s iconic \u201cviolin bass\u201d since 1961 Close to 70 years after German instrument company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[6382,146,85,46,409,17403],"class_list":{"0":"post-193487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-beatles","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-paul-mccartney"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}