Hondo Deluxe 737 identification help...

Tokai Forum

Help Support Tokai Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

hobebru

New member
Joined
May 2, 2007
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Location
Kansas City, Missouri
Can someone tell me if the Hondo Deluxe 737 LesPaul copy was made in Japan ? If not. where was this model maufactured? Is this model (the Deluxe737) comparable with the Hondo ll?
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Youer assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Bruce
 
Hondo 737
lp2.JPG

Hondo II
7019.jpg
 
The pre 1983 higher end models seem to be Japanese and probably made by Matsumoku.
If it's not Japanese then it's probably made by Samick.

From the Acoustic Blue Book

http://books.google.com/books?id=dn_wwsIX_mIC&pg=PA278&lpg=PA278&dq=hondo+ii+japan&source=web&ots=Vn7a4SDOro&sig=LiZk-dbLDcwMg5cDUxWOX3fxSaw#PPA3,M1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hondo_%28guitar_company%29

This Hondo 737 Deluxe is from 1981/1982 so it looks like they are Japanese.

http://www.tokaiforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=7293&sid=e3e5c73ca36df5c6c216e7086492ecb1
 
If it's not Japanese then it's probably made by Samick.
And the Hondo's that were made by Samick were done so in their Korean plant.
 
And the Korean ones usually have plywood bodies.
I once heard a Korean Hondo with a plywood body through a Gorilla transistor amp fully cranked.
I've never heard anything that bad.
No mids, no lows just pure ice pick in the ear distortion.
 
Agreed...for the most part they are one of the crappiest sounding guitars I've ever heard...and remembering that I've heard/seen/played heaps of them as at one stage they flooded the Australian market.
From memory the Dimarzio equipped ones were'nt too bad....but yeah...the plywood bodies....eewww.
I have an old Emperador MiJ strat body thats plywood too...from about 1979.
As the paint wore off from belt buckles it showed up the plywood underneath.
 
This reminds me of a Black Hondo 11 Les Paul Copy I learnt to play on. A truly awful guitar by any standards. Plywood body, egg slicer action and best of all single coil pickups under the chrome covers!. Oh, and the narrow badly cut nut, uneven frets...... In fact it put me of Les Paul Style guitars for the best part of 25 years. Thankfully, I'm fully recovered now.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top