Guitar

Hoyer 5069 Flying Arrow - Germany's answer to the Gibson Flying V

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Dirk writes:

I just bought a Hoyer Flying Arrow 5069 from 1972 (not yet a 5069 S with DiMarzios, neck-through and string-through) in my town here in France after having followed it for more than a year. The guy who owned it last (it changed between two shop-owners) got hassled by me for a couple of weeks and yes, yesterday after two and a half hours of "discussing" in front of his shop he ended up by bringing the case out, taking my (reasonable) €600 in cash and I ran to plug it into my amps...

It's very pleasant to negotiate with real people in real life without screen and keyboard inter-faced, I must say!

Some basics: three piece mahogany body, center block plus two "wings", an ultra-rigid laminated set neck, fat and round (about twenty layers or so) like some older German archtops (Höfner, Hopf or Hoyer?); the original, Hoyer-branded, low-output single-coil pickups which look like Humbuckers have been replaced by some no-name doublebobbins, one volume, a pot to influence the lower frequencies, another one for the higher tones. The switch (very flimsy on top, good mecanically underneath) does neck, bridge and both out-of-phase (very useful for a full-throttle Hardrock axe ridden at 11 - but it does the softer, bluesier or jazzier range as well with the neck pickup and pots rolled back).

I'll get her some decent pickups one day (Gibson '57, without the + ?).

The interesting thing in fact is the bridge (Schaller ???), no stamp. It is adjustable in any direction; I wouldn't call that a roller bridge, because the rollers just help you to adjust the spacing of the strings as you like...

Intonation is perfect so.

Easy to service; just loosen the strings, unscrew the block which holds them, swing it away and you do whatever is necessary to her. Ah yes, tuners are Schallers, not original.

I love it, sounds great and I don't want to sell it.

When started [playing guitar] about the age of 14/16 there were Flying Vs or Arrows all over the town, every shop had them, cause I used to live in Hanover, Germany and Scorpions played Vs, at least the Schenkers did. So we flatenned our noses on windows and put our paws on some of these Vs, but never on a Gibson (always protected by "Please don't touch" or "Ask a seller" notes) and by that time the Flying Arrows had a very good reputation as a Gibson V Killer (the Humbucker versions!) and we were allowed to touch them!

If you're a poser, you'll need the right logo. If you're a player looking for the advantages of these guitars, accepting the inconveniences, a Hoyer Flying Arrow will satisfy you for a lot less money. It's a 40 year old mahogany girl with an undestroyable neck, made in Germany and not thrown together from Asian prefrabrics.

Just two things: if anybody knows how to get the fretboard dots back up (they've sunk in theirs slots !) I'd be happy to learn about that. Second thing, if anybody knows about a 5069 S (neck-through, string-through, last version of it) for sale, I'd be more than very interested! I'd even be interested in a 5069 S woodwork, just the body and the neck... all offers are way more than welcome.

Dirk can be contacted via Guitarz - we will pass any messages on to him.

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