The Hohner Essential Guitar line impresses by simplicity and elegance of its carefully chosen design. After its successful start in 2008 with the Essential Parlor and Essential Folk size models, the extension of the Hohner Essential line with three significant models: A nylon-string classical, a dreadnought steel-string, and a mini jumbo with a cutaway and Fishman ION pickup for the stage musician. All Hohner Essential Series guitar models feature a solid sitka spruce top with a classy matte finish, mahogany backs and sides and a nato neck with rosewood fingerboard. The Hohner Essential Series with their appealing looks, good sound characteristics and an excellent price/performance ratio offers the right instrument for a broad spectrum of musical genres.  Scroll down to view the guitars in the Hohner Essential series.

Hohner Essentials - All that is needed and nothing that is not.

From day one we had more fun crafting the Hohner Essential series than any of our previous instruments. We had to strip away all of our past notions during the building process and instead,  focus on the essential qualities that these guitars needed to embody.  What was required in order to produce a great new guitar?  Breaking it down to its most basic elements, these instruments needed to have their own voice, to intonate perfectly in tune,
 all the way up and down the neck, and lastly, to play like butter. 

To encourage the vibration of the tops,  we eliminated the pick-guards and applied a micro-thin poly finish.
 Instead of including fancy ornamentation, we chose to focus on perfecting the manufacturing process
and invest in the sound and playability of these guitars. Something old and something new.

To give the Essentials their own voice we developed a process called “Frequency Matching”. We distilled basic elements of a technique called tap tuning, something that violin makers have been doing for centuries, and match the Solid Sitka Spruce top with a similarly resonant Mahogany back. When these two pieces of wood vibrate in synergy you will find the guitar has a pure, rich, singing tone that makes even the small bodied parlor sound huge. To encourage the vibration of the tops we eliminated the pickguards and applied a micro-thin poly finish.
Guitars by their very nature play consistently out of tune. In the first position play an E chord and it sounds perfectly in tune, play a D chord and it’s a little out, now play an A chord and it may sound so badly out of tune that you want to tune up again. This can only get worse as you play up the neck. To rectify this situation, Hohner has equipped each Essential model guitar with the Earvana Compensated Tuning System*. This special nut and bridge system assures that the these guitars play with perfect intonation up and down the neck making
them a pleasure to play.

*Each Essential guitar goes through a 12-point inspection at Hohner’s US facility in Virginia to insure that every guitar is set up to sound great. Intonation, action, and overall quality are carefully checked.

Click here to enter the Essential Series Website.

The Hohner Essential series, which also includes folk, mini-jumbo, classical, and parlor guitars, are minimally appointed instruments designed to provide a lot of bang for the buck. Essential series guitars are built with solid Sitka spruce tops and laminated mahogany back and sides that are analyzed for common resonance and paired through a tap-tuning process called “frequency matching.” But the most significant performance enhancement built into the Essential series guitars (save for the classical model) is Hohner’s use of the Earvana compensated-tuning system, which improves intonation by varying the relative length of individual strings to compensate for their different tension and mass.  In the past the manufacturing process of guitars was left to the luck of the draw. We identified the point in the building process that makes the most impact on the sound.... the selection of the tops and backs and instituted a new process that makes the selection based on tone rather than which piece of wood is the next on the stack.

Using elements of tap tuning we select our tops and backs by a process we call Frequency Matching. This produces a vibrant, rich tone that makes even the smallest guitars sound huge.

Perfect intonation, across the fretboard.

Guitars by their very nature play consistently out of tune. This is why singers generally prefer playing with a piano than a guitar. With a guitar they have to adjust their pitch when the guitarist stops playing open chords.
 
The Essential Series solves this problem using the Earvana Compensated Tuning System (CTS). The Earvana CTS uses unique break-off points at the nut and bridge resulting in perfect intonation across the entire fretboard. Even using a capo is no problem with the Earvana system. So sing loud and true, this guitar will not fool you.
 
Improved intonation is another way Hohner is Tuned In.  There is nothing worse than having to set up a guitar before you play. It’s a waste of your time and resources. That’s why Hohner sets up all Essential guitars using a 12 point inspection process before shipping to dealers.  So put away your allen keys and come and give the Essential’s a test run.