1963 Hofner 457/S/E2

On January 19, 2026, I went to pick up a blue bag. In the blue recycling bag was parts to a Hofner guitar which I was asked to identify and possibly date.

Hofner’s guitars are a little different in the way they are identified – cutaway or non cutaway, binding, pickups or no pickups, body length were all factors. Not having a truss rod could put it into the 60s as truss rods were pretty much standard for Hofners in the 70s. These were the things to look at as well as more research on those factors on particular models.

I did manage to take a picture of the build date under the F hole on the treble side. It was pretty smeared to really make out what is written. The year was the one I really was looking to read: to me, it looked like “1953” but that “5” is more than likely a “6”. 1963

The body had been poorly sanded previously as some areas have deep marks and evident marks of sanding going across the grains. Somebody tried sanding it and colour the guitar again or tried to hide the fact that they went through the veneer by using something that wasn’t transparent.

We tried to take off the coat that was on the guitar back and sides. As the sanding went on, spots where the top veneer had been sanded through appeared throughout the back and sides – the deep brown spot on the picture on the right (below).

Being careful of not going through the flame Maple veneer and trying to get the sand off whatever is on the body was a balancing act. The back has a highly figured back and I wanted to keep it like that. Coats of super or ultra blonde shellac with some amber dye was applied.

After a good number of coats to the back and sides, I turned the body over and sanded the top plate again. Not a lot of the brown colour came off on the first attempt the top plate was sanded. The second time was more successful in taking off the coat that was on it. Shellac with less amber dye in it was used to polish the top plate.

I had tried to check the neck projection to the bridge before and from what I saw, the neck was a little low. At the bottom of the heel, it looks like it was worked and is uneven now. From the research I did in trying to figure out the model of the guitar – and I am not even sure if the one titled is even correct at this moment – but there should be a heel cap. Possibly made out of plastic.

From the bits of original paint on the neck and top plate, the guitar may have had a neck in a shade of brown and a possibly a tobacco burst top plate.

After French polishing both sides, I decided to try to take the dyed shellac off the binding around the sides to let the white binding show again. I taped along the binding edge and read into different ways of tackling the job but I felt that hand sanding would be the most comfortable for me.

The project was on pause for a few days so that one of the pickups could be rewound. I gave the bag that had all the hardware for the guitar in it so I couldn’t check the projection of the fingerboard. I knew it was low before so I had added a few shims in the cavity.

After getting all the hardware back, I had to figure out which of the two bridges in the bag was the original. I did check on the internet and leaned towards one of the two bridges and found that there was a hole for in it. Looking at the pickguard, it had two finishing nails in it to attach to the bridge and neck; I had found the correct bridge. With that, I checked the fingerboard projection and it was higher than the height of the bridge at its lowest setting. This is what I wanted, some adjustability in the bridge for the future.

The neck was glued on and the pickups and other hardware was carefully put back on. There were some screws missing for the tuning machines and truss rod cover. Well…there were two screws but they weren’t for either of those two parts.

When I was installing the tuning machines, I noticed that the screw holes didn’t match up to the drilled holes in the headstock. I even flipped them around just to make sure. These aren’t the original tuning machines and I had to drill a few holes to install the screws.

With all the parts on. I let the guitar sit for one more day – I just want to be sure the glue has cured fully before trying to string it up. I have never just glued a neck in, I believe, so I will say that I was concerned.

After getting the strings on and testing the eletronics, I checked if there was any buzzing. And, yes there was. The first thing that came to mind was to check the fingerboard radius and compare it to the saddle radius. The fingerboard is 7.5″ radius and the saddle was higher than 20″ radius since that is the highest radius gauge.

I let the guitar settle with the string tension on and went back to it a few hours later. I replaced the saddle with a NuBone piece and gave it the proper radius. This eliminated the majority of the buzzing that was going on. I spot levelled a few frets as there were only three spots that had slight buzzing.

The other issue was the switches weren’t working properly. Turning some of the switches on/off completely cut the sound out of the amplifier – or at least, it sounded like it. At certain switch settings, the guitar output is quite low out of the amplifier. I sprayed the switches a lot. I do remember having a customer guitar in which I had to spray a potentiometer a lot more than what most other guitars would require. This turned out to be the same.

Final adjustments made to the Hofner the next day . The switches worked when tested and the guitar put onto full tension.