NGD: mid 60s Jolana Hurricane - the Jazzmaster of the eastern bloc!

[Kinx]

Oh I missed this thread the first go around.
Congratulations! Those Jolana guitars are really cool and having such a story attached to it only makes it better.
Having been to Hradec Kralove I can also say it's built in a beautiful city.

Haha, it's actually my home town, I was born here and right now I'm living just couple of blocks away from the OG factory site. There were three Jolana factories: Hradec Kralove with small volume output and where R&D was based until mid 70s, Krnov intended for mass production of solid bodies (early 60s to early 90s) and Horovice intended originally for hollowbodies (60s - late 70s) and subsequently solid bodies - IE legendary Rickenbacker clone called D Bass was made there in the late 80s, subsequently Kramer made their solidbodies there starting in 88 and later Epiphone, Dpector and other brands used this factory since the 90s.

The Hradec Kralove factory guitars are the most coveted ones, since they generally tend to be of higher quality thanks to better QA and better tonewood selection (the factory was part of Petrof factory site, legendary piano brand with tons of fine tonewoods on site).

[timbo86]

Damn, that thing sounds amazing! Great playing too.

[antisymmetric]

Great guitar and demo, even better acquisition story!

[ and Horovice intended originally for hollowbodies (60s - late 70s)

I like Jolanas a lot, there's a few models I'd like to own. I have a Rubin (a very rare find in NZ)- so it would have come from the Horovice factory?

[Kinx]

Great guitar and demo, even better acquisition story!

[ and Horovice intended originally for hollowbodies (60s - late 70s)

I like Jolanas a lot, there's a few models I'd like to own. I have a Rubin (a very rare find in NZ)- so it would have come from the Horovice factory?

Yep, I think they ceased production in HK factory sometime in the early 70s, so before Rubin came along. Rubin is definitely worth it for the alnico pickups with exposed pole pieces, best pickups produced by Jolana by far. Production of these pickups was very limited tho, because of unavailability of the alnico material (it was deemed as strategic for army reserves, therefore ubiquitous for use everywhere else).

It's pretty cool that these odd eastern bloc hollowbodies spark interest across the globe

[Kinx]

Great story and a great guitar, what wonderful friends and such a nice surprise, they had very good timing to present the gift and must have been quite a feeling to receive it in such a way! Congratulations on your new guitar.

By the way, the second demo sounds really good, is this a 25 inch (635mm) scale length? Or is it the full fender scale length? Looks a bit shorter perhaps. Also very interesting that it has the zero fret design like a mosrite.

I finally got to measure it and it is 24.75 , just like a Les Paul

[mark76]

3/4¨ longer than a Jag, to boot

[Mechanical Birds]

OP that is an awesome story. You have great friends it sounds like. Happy belated and the guitar looks fresh as fuck