Hofner may have been an old-school German company with roots in the 1880s, but in the years after WWII, Hofner family members were well aware that the strongest market for their electric guitars was in the UK. If it’s British guitarists had felt any resistance to a german-made product, Hofner ingeniously dispelled it by creating a guitar that Brits could legitimately call their own.

Hofner called it the Committee because it was designed by a committee of British guitarists, including Frank Deniz, Ike Issacs, Jack Llewellyn, Freddie Phillips, Roy Plummer and Bert Weedon.

Easily identifiable in it’s early years by it’s fancy peghead, the Committee got one of its biggest boosts from Denny Wright, a jazz guitarist who “moonlighted” in the recording studio with popular skiffie artists Lonnie Donegan and Johnny Duncan. The Committee was so important to Duncan’s sound that, in later years, when session guitarist “Big Jim” Sullivan joined him in the studio, he made Sullivan put down his Les Paul and play a Committee.