1981 advertisement
The Professional Series (also known as Pro Series) was introduced in 1980 after Samick's engineers took a trip to Japan to learn from their manufacturing processes and teamed up with Tokai and Matsumoku to create a line of Japanese-made models. The purpose of the line was to improve perception of the Hondo brand name. They were built from late 1979 through 1981, and sold from 1980-1983. Most featured the Hondo II "Script" logo, but in early 1981,they began switching to the new "Sunrise" logo, and a gold plated truss rod cover. After the Professional Series was discontinued, the Revival Series, Deluxe Series Mark II and Mastercaster Series took its place as Hondo's top-of-the-line series.
Serial numbers for these guitars follow their respective manufacturers' codes (which both happen to use the first digit to represent the last digit of the year, making them easy to date). On bolt-neck models, they were often engraved on the neck plate with a gold and black "Made in Japan" sticker (some Tokai-built models had a white "Made in Japan" sticker with black text), but not always. Some had no serial number but "Made in Japan" was engraved. Set-neck models often had no serial number, but the ones that did had it stamped into the back of the headstock.
Models[]
1980 H-1100 B ad
- #7 (Classical Concert style)
- H-1010 (Vantage style)
- H-1011 (Vantage style)
- H-1012 (Vantage style)
- H-1015 (Vantage bass style)
- H-1015/8 (Vantage bass style)
- H-1016 (Vantage bass style)
- H-1018 (SG style)
- H-1020 (LP style)
- H-1021 (LP style)
- HP-1025 (LP style)
- H-1030 (Vantage style)
- H-1040 (Eagle style)
- H-1051 (Lead I style)
- H-1052 (Lead II style)
- H-1060 (335 style)
- HP-1081 (Longhorn)
- HP-1082 (Longhorn doubleneck)
- H-1090 (Tele style)
- H-1100 (Strat style)
- H-1111 (Music Man style)
- H-1120 (P-Bass style)
- H-1181 (Longhorn Bass)
- HP-1214 (Vantage style)
- HP-1216 (Vantage bass style)