Telstar

The specs above are the 1960s Wehen Telstar, mostly one measured Standard. No current model carries the name. In the Detmold and Dresden shop copy, the International is the three-pickup version with gold hardware; one listing titled International describes two. A four-string Telstar Standard is a bass. The Guitar Castle instrument Lee Ranaldo used is a 1996 build from Salem, Oregon, not a Wehen Telstar.

Construction

The job was a West German solid with a space-age name and a mixer’s worth of switches. Offset in the hand. Short. Light. A vibrato, and a long bare string behind the bridge.

The shop that built it had already moved once. German Wikipedia: the Hopf name is in the instrument-making record from 1669, with Caspar Hopf (1655–1716) in Klingenthal. The Allgemeine Zeitung (15 January 2026) dates the family tradition to 1655. The two dates are the birth year and the first guild record, not two foundings. Ernst Max Hopf founded E. Max Hopf in Zwota, near Klingenthal, in 1906, as a string maker. His son Willy (1906–1990) took the firm in 1932 and, with his brother Wolfgang, added an instrument workshop. Until 1948 the family was still in the Klingenthal / Markneukirchen district of Saxony. They left for Wehen, in Hesse, before the GDR and before the workshop could be nationalized. The new firm was Willy Hopf & Co., on Platter Straße: strings, fretted instruments, and woodwinds. Wehen is now part of Taunusstein. Hopf Electric Guitars’ own history puts Dieter Hopf (1936–2026) and a Wolfgang Hopf (1930–2013) in the shop in the early 1950s, calls them Willy’s sons, and credits Dieter with the electrics of the 1950s and 1960s, naming the Saturn 63. It does not name the Telstar. German Wikipedia’s Wolfgang is the brother who joined in 1932, not a son born in 1930. The two accounts are not the same man.

The name is the satellite. Telstar, the communications satellite, went up in 1962. VintageFans, the Detmold shop whose paragraph is copied onto other Telstar listings, says the guitar was named for that satellite and built from 1963 to 1966, in two versions. No Hopf catalog page with the launch year has been published. Listings still date individual guitars 1963, 1964, 1965, and “about 1963.” A Vancouver Craigslist ad, updated 12 October 2026, includes a German purchase receipt dated 1968. That is one guitar changing hands. It is not a factory end date. 1963 is the start those dealer accounts give. Nothing earlier has turned up.

Two guitars share the name. VintageFans: the Standard, and the International. In that copy, and in a Dresden shop’s listing, the International has gold hardware and three pickups, and is the scarcer of the two. VintageFans also says the International used “higher quality wood.” That is the shop’s sentence, not a wood list. eric's Gear Depot titles a 1963 guitar International and then describes two single-coils, a bolt-on neck, and 22 frets. A mislabeled Standard would explain the two pickups. The listing does not say. The Standard, everywhere else, is the two-pickup guitar.

The numbers in the specs are sellers’ tapes, not a factory sheet. Weights on named guitars, not one average: The Old Europe 3.06 kg on its green Standard; Beyers Music 2.6 kg (the listing also prints 91.7 oz) on a white Standard; a Romanian seller 3.7 kg on a 1964 International, with a neck he calls mahogany and “forever straight.” Vintage & Rare’s 1964 red-sunburst Standard calls the neck Hopf’s patented “ever straight” neck. The Old Europe’s “no adjustable truss rod” and those two “straight neck” claims may be the same idea. They are three guitars. Amazona (27 August 2022) gives the Saturn 63 a 620 mm scale as well. The Saturn is a different instrument. The shared number is not a Telstar factory scale.

The pickups are the other fight. VintageFans: Dynacord, model GTA 3, made in Germany. The Old Europe, on its green Standard: Schaller, 4.89k neck and 4.3k bridge. Willie’s American Guitars, in a 3 August 2026 video of one Standard, calls the pickups handmade. Three accounts. No Hopf page picks one.

The circuit is why players either love it or rip it out. The Old Europe: three presets — M at full volume, R reduced, Treble straight to the bridge pickup — plus a pickup selector. Willie’s video walks the same idea from the cavity: a selector for neck, bridge, or both, wired in an order the shop calls backwards from Gibson; an M setting with its own volume and tone; an R setting with a second pair; then a treble switch and yet another volume. Fiber board, screws, rivets. Cline, on his Standard, describes roller controls rather than knobs, “typical of German guitars of the period.” A string damper survives on The Old Europe’s Standard. One red example, sold as a Sid Kleiner Telstar, has a mechanical mute and a mirror pickguard; the seller says Sid Kleiner had a store and studio in New Jersey, and that this headstock wears his name. One labeled guitar. Not a catalog model with a published count.

Andreas, in Premier Guitar (27 January 2026), remembers a worn 1960s Standard as his first electric: too many pickups, switches, and pots, a neck that had already warped, and neck bolts spaced narrowly enough that the neck felt loose, which he calls typical of German guitars of that era. He later rebuilt it. The rebuilt guitar is not a Telstar anymore.

Not the Saturn. The Saturn 63 is the thinline, with teardrop sound holes, the one Hopf Electric Guitars ties to the Hamburg Star-Club sign. Amazona groups the solid, space-named Hopfs — Jupiter, Cosmos, Telstar, Satellite, Galaxie — as the Stratocaster side of that catalog. Sellers, and Cline, describe the Telstar as an offset, Jaguar and Jazzmaster territory, with a rhythm circuit and a long behind-bridge string. Both comparisons are in print. The body you buy is the offset. Not a Jazzmaster, and not a Jaguar: different country, different scale, different switch count. Not Lemmy Kilmister’s Hopf. The company’s history gives him a Studio bass. Not the four-string. Amazona’s Telstar Standard bass is a solidbody four-string with a sieve pickup. Not the 2023 electrics. Hopf Electric Guitars, the company Christopher, Daniel, and Patrick Hopf started — Wikipedia says 2022, the company’s own page says 2023 — lists a Saturn 23, a Saturn SB, and a Skyrocket. No Telstar.

Willy Hopf & Co. filed for bankruptcy in 1985 (German Wikipedia). The guitar department in Taunusstein went to Dieter Hopf, whose own atelier, opened in 1981, built concert guitars, not this solid. Amazona dates the end of Hopf’s own electric production to 1970, under Japanese imports, with the firm then selling Aztec copies. Dieter Hopf died in Taunusstein on 13 January 2026. The Telstar was already long out of the book.

Players

Nels Cline — a 1960s Telstar Standard, with Wilco. Premier Guitar’s rig rundown (Rebecca Dirks, 26 January 2012) lists a ’60s Hopf among the guitars he had out with Wilco, and notes that he likes to play behind the bridge. In the video of that rig he calls the guitar a Hopf Telstar Standard. The behind-bridge notes on “Art of Almost” are the point: his Jazzmasters have that string too, but this run is long enough to give different pitches. He also names “Capitol City” on the then-new record, and “Country Disappeared” on Wilco (The Album). “Art of Almost” and “Capitol City” are on The Whole Love (2011). “Country Disappeared” is on Wilco (The Album) (2009). His line, in that video: it is luxurious to play guitars like this live; he records them often for the odd tones and had not been taking them on tour, “but now of course with Wilco I’m completely enabled.” He is not sure he bought it at Mike’s Music in Cincinnati. The Loft, Chicago (5 January 2021), describes his mid-1960s Telstar Standard as electric green and names the same three songs live. The 1959 Jazzmaster is a different guitar. So is the Jaguar.

Lee Ranaldo — a Guitar Castle instrument, not a Wehen Telstar. The Sonic Youth gear guide titles one 1996 guitar “Hopf Telstar” and says it was used on “Junkie’s Promise,” tuning DAADDA, from Washing Machine. The same note says the guitar was manufactured for him by Tim Knight of Guitar Castle in Salem, Oregon. The sold-gear page calls it a Guitar Castle Hopf Telstar, serial 001, the first guitar that shop built for the band, a red offset, electronics cut back to a volume knob, auctioned on Reverb in October 2018. The gear-guide note on the same instrument also lists two single-coils, a rosewood board, two switches per pickup, two knobs, and a silver pickguard. The two pages on one site do not describe the same control layout. The tab archive is plain about the builder: Tim Knight, Salem, built it for the band. A later shop, listing a red mirror-guard guitar it calls a Sid Kleiner Telstar, guessed that Ranaldo’s was a German import with a different headstock logo. That is the shop’s guess. The band’s gear guide says Knight built it. “Junkie’s Promise” on that guitar is not a 1963 Wehen Telstar.

No other player has a named source on a Wehen Telstar.

Rarity

You cannot buy a new Telstar. Hopf Electric Guitars’ living models are the Saturn and the Skyrocket (the company’s site, read 29 October 2026). Dieter Hopf’s concert guitars are a different bench. No reissue of this solid turned up.

Hopf never published a Telstar total. A neck date, or “about 1963” on a listing, dates a guitar. It is not a census. Dealer copy puts the run at 1963–1966 and calls the International rarer than the Standard. That is a shop’s ranking. The 1968 receipt on the Vancouver Craigslist guitar is a purchase, not a production figure.

What is actually thinner: an International that still has three pickups and the gold hardware; a Standard whose M / R / treble switching has not been pulled; a string damper that is still on the guitar. A Telstar bass is a different instrument. A Saturn is a different instrument. Andreas’s rebuilt Standard is one guitar that used to be this one. Ranaldo’s red offset is a 1996 Oregon build. Cline’s green Standard is one object, and it has not been a public sale.

Value

Informal estimate, 29 October 2026. Not an appraisal.

Prices below are asking prices unless marked sold. No celebrity Telstar sale has turned up. Cline’s guitar is not a comparable. Ranaldo’s Guitar Castle instrument is not a Wehen Telstar, and the 2018 auction price was not printed on the gear guide. No period list price for the Telstar has been published. Amazona’s “about 430 Deutschmarks” in 1963 is the Saturn, a different guitar.

New street. None. The Hopf Electric Guitars site listed no Telstar on 29 October 2026. A new Saturn SB is a different model: one Reverb ask, the same week, showed €4,900 (was €5,600). That number is not a Telstar.

Used modern. No current or reissue Telstar turned up, so there is no separate modern used market.

Vintage / collectible. No sold median has been published. Asks, checked 29 October 2026, and not sales: VintageFans, Detmold, a 1960s Standard in sunburst, $1,077.13 plus $85.55 shipping on the US listing, and €919 on Reverb’s euro pages — one guitar, two currencies. wurst.guitars, Neustrelitz, a 1960s International: €790 on the shop’s own page (was €840), and €875 on that shop’s Reverb listing after a drop from €925, shipping free. Same seller, so the two figures are not two guitars. A Vancouver listing updated 12 October 2026 asked $1,450 for a Standard, with the 1968 German receipt in the lot. Older pages, not 2026 results: Beyers Music, a white Standard, marked sold, the price on the page €590 plus €10 shipping, listed four years ago. Germany’s Vintage Guitar Shop, an International, last price on the page $915.68, seller away, listed seven years ago. Vlad’s Gear Locker, a 1964 International, listing ended at €990 plus €70, listed three years ago. The Old Europe’s green Standard and Vintage & Rare’s 1964 red-sunburst Standard are both marked sold, and neither page printed a price. An ask and a hammer are different kinds of number, and here the hammers are mostly missing.

See also

• fender-jazzmaster — the offset sellers, and Cline, set the Telstar beside; a different scale, and the behind-the-bridge idea he already had
• fender-jaguar — the other Fender offset in that comparison; not this Wehen solid, and not Cline’s Hopf
• hofner-club-40 — the other West German electric of the same years; fully hollow, one pickup, Bubenreuth, not a Taunusstein solid

Sources

• German Wikipedia, Hopf (Gitarrenbauer) — 1669; Caspar Hopf 1655–1716; E. Max Hopf, Zwota, 1906; Willy from 1932; Saxony until 1948, then Wehen, Platter Straße; Dieter’s atelier 1981; Willy Hopf & Co. bankrupt 1985; Dieter died 13 January 2026; electric revival dated 2022
• Hopf Electric Guitars, history — Wehen / Wiesbaden workshop; Dieter and the 1950s–60s electrics, Saturn 63 and the Star-Club; Lemmy on a Studio bass; 2023 revival, Saturn 23, no Telstar (read 29 October 2026)
• Amazona, Hopf Saturn 63 and Saturn 67, 27 August 2022 — Jupiter, Cosmos, Telstar, Satellite, Galaxie as the solid, space-named models; Saturn is the thinline; Saturn guitar scale 620 mm; Telstar Standard bass, four strings, sieve pickup; own production to 1970
• VintageFans, Telstar Standard, Reverb — named for the 1962 satellite; produced 1963–1966; Standard and International; Dynacord GTA 3; International has gold hardware, three pickups, “higher quality wood”
• The Old Europe, Telstar Standard, Reverb — 620 mm; nut 43 mm; 3.06 kg; 12" radius; rosewood; no adjustable truss rod; Schaller single-coils, 4.89k and 4.3k; M / R / Treble presets; string damper; marked sold, price not printed
• Beyers Music, white Standard, Reverb — 2.6 kg / 91.7 oz; marked sold at the page price €590; listed four years ago
• Vintage & Rare, 1964 Telstar Standard — “ever straight” neck, patented by Hopf; marked sold, no price
• Willie’s American Guitars, video, 3 August 2026 — steel pickguard, brass plate; M / R plus a treble switch; pickups called handmade
• eric’s Gear Depot, 1963 International, Reverb — solid body, bolt-on, 22-fret board, two single-coils in that listing’s text, floating bridge, vibrato
• Germany’s Vintage Guitar Shop, International, Reverb — three pickups, gold hardware; last price on the page $915.68; listed seven years ago
• Vlad’s Gear Locker, 1964 International, Reverb — 3.7 kg; mahogany neck in the seller’s text; “forever straight”; listing ended at €990
• Premier Guitar, Rebecca Dirks, Rig Rundown, 26 January 2012 — a ’60s Hopf in the Wilco rig; behind-the-bridge playing
• Nels Cline, rundown video — he calls it a Hopf Telstar Standard; “Art of Almost,” “Capital City,” “Country Disappeared”; roller controls; solid, not laminate
• The Loft, Chicago, 5 January 2021 — his mid-1960s Standard described as electric green; the same three songs live
• Premier Guitar, Anne Erickson, 15 April 2010 — “oddities like Hopf and Magnatone,” not named as a Telstar
• Premier Guitar, reader guitar, 27 January 2026 — a worn Standard as a first electric; narrow neck-bolt spacing; later rebuilt
• Sonic Youth gear guide, Hopf Telstar — Lee, 1996, “Junkie’s Promise,” DAADDA; Tim Knight, Guitar Castle, Salem, Oregon; auctioned October 2018
• Sonic Youth, sold gear — Guitar Castle Hopf Telstar, serial 001; red offset; volume only
• Sonic Youth tab archive, “Junkie’s Promise” — the Guitar Castle “Hopf Telstar” was built for the band by Tim Knight
• VintageFans, 1960s Standard, Reverb, still listed — ask $1,077.13 + $85.55; €919 on euro pages (29 October 2026)
• wurst.guitars, Telstar International — €790, was €840
• wurst.guitars on Reverb — €875 after a drop from €925; same shop
• Allgemeine Zeitung, 15 January 2026 — Dieter Hopf died at 89; atelier on Platter Straße in Wehen; the paper dates the tradition to 1655, where Wikipedia uses 1669 for the name in the record
• Craigslist Vancouver, Telstar Standard — ask $1,450; German purchase receipt dated 1968; posted 31 August 2026, updated 12 October 2026