Hohner Musikinstrumente GmbH & Co. KG

Hohner Musikinstrumente GmbH & Co. KG, more commonly known as Hohner, was formed by Matthias Hohner (1833 – 1902) in 1857 in Trossingen, southern Germany. Although the company was highly regarded for their electric keyboard instruments of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Clavinet and Pianet, their lasting reputation still stands on their acoustic contributions, particularly with respect to the production of harmonicas, accordions, recorders, and melodicas. Within the company’s first year, 650 harmonicas were produced, which led to the construction of what was at the time the largest harmonica factory in the world. The first and most popular harmonica model was known as The Marine Band, released in 1896 with twenty reeds. This model was used extensively throughout the twentieth century, including by artists such as Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Neil Young. The Marine Band was followed in the 1970s by The Special 20, which employed a plastic instead of wooden comb. One of Hohner’s most innovative designs in the manufacture of harmonicas came in the mid 1990s with the development of The Modular System, which allowed the instrument to function with interchangeable parts. Among other notable harmonicas produced by Hohner include The Old Standby, which was the instrument of choice by many country musicians, The American Ace beginner’s harmonica, as well as a series of chromatic and tremolo harmonicas, the latter of which contain two pairs of reeds for each note. Moreover, several popular musicians have consulted on the design of customized harmonicas with Hohner, including Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, and Larry Adler. In the mid 1950s, Hohner began manufacturing electric guitars. Their first electric keyboard instrument came in the form of the Cembalet, an electrically amplified harpsichord designed in the 1950s by Ernst Zacharias, who had a keen interest in modernizing early musical instruments. The Pianet followed soon after in two different models, employing an action that merged both the striking and plucking mechanisms of pianos and harpsichords, respectively. While still in the production phases of the Pianet, Zacharias developed the Clavinet, an electrically amplified clavichord, which stands as the company’s most successful electric keyboard instrument. The Clavinet was designed in seven different models between 1964 and the early 1980s, including the domestic models I and II, the triangular-shaped and reverse-keyed model L, the model C, the portable model D6, the model E7, and the Duo model, which combined the Clavinet with the Pianet. When production ceased on the models E7 and the Duo model, Hohner continued to attach the ‘Clavinet’ brand name to a series of digital pianos, known as the ‘Clavinet DP’, despite the fact that they did not employ any electromechanical means of tone generation. In the 1940s, Hohner manufactured the Multimonica and Multimonica II, which were essentially vacuum tube-based instruments that combined both a simple sawtooth wave synthesizer and a fan-driven reed organ. In the late 1960s, Hohner also produced the Electra-Piano, which employed a metal reed-based tone generating mechanism similar to that used in the Wurlitzer 200 electric piano. Between 1968 and 1986, Matthias Karl Hohner, the last member of the Hohner family to be involved in the affairs of the company, served as manager. In 2000, Hohner dissolved their association with the Clavinet brand. The largest collection of Hohner instruments and archival documents is currently housed at the German Harmonica and Accordion Museum in Trossingen, curated by Martin Häffner.