An Egerland family, a grandfather’s violin shop, and jazz.

Hanika began in 1953 in Baiersdorf, a small Franconian town near Erlangen better known for its horseradish. Its founder, Helmut Hanika, was born in Schönbach in the Egerland, an instrument-making town in what is now the Czech Republic, where it is called Luby. After the expulsion of the Sudeten German instrument makers from the Egerland in October 1946, the company says, his family settled, after a stop in Hesse, in the area around Bubenreuth, where much of the displaced trade was rebuilt.

From 1947 to 1949, the company says, Helmut learned violin-making from his grandfather, Anton Mayer, who ran a small violin workshop in Baiersdorf; small violins sold well to American soldiers as souvenirs. The soldiers also brought jazz, and with it an interest in archtop guitars. Helmut moved from violins to guitars and mandolins, selling his first instruments to Framus in Bubenreuth, and on 1 June 1953, on coming of age, he registered his own business, the firm “Helmut Hanika.”

In July 1957 he moved into a larger workshop on the Egerstraße in Baiersdorf, with up to four employees, and began building instruments under the name SOLI — archtops, “wandering” guitars, Hawaiian guitars and classical guitars — for customers including the music house Otto Gläsel in Gelsenkirchen and the guitar maker Hopf. German Wikipedia also records the SOLI brand and the supply to Hopf. Some dealers sold SOLI guitars with their own labels inside, the company says.

Concert guitars, a second generation and a ladder of classes.

The turn to the classical guitar defines the brand. From October 1965, the company says, Helmut Hanika concentrated on concert guitars sold under his own name as “Helmut Hanika Konzertgitarren,” leaving mass production to others once the heyday of the archtop had passed; German Wikipedia dates the switch to the 1970s, so the sources differ. He qualified as a master plucked-instrument maker in Nuremberg in 1966.

His son Armin Hanika began his apprenticeship in the family firm in 1980, the company says, developed his own model line from 1986 with a slimmer body based on the Spanish guitar, and passed his master’s examination in Nuremberg in December 1987. In 1993 he took over the business, which was renamed Armin Hanika Gitarrenbau; the website names him as owner and managing director today. The company says a third generation has joined: Armin’s eldest son, Tobias, qualified as a journeyman plucked-instrument maker in 2021.

The range is divided into four classes — Basisklasse, Mittelklasse, Oberklasse and Meisterklasse — from solid-wood student guitars to individually built concert instruments, with a custom shop alongside. German Wikipedia notes that the middle class pairs spruce or cedar tops with a cedro neck reinforced with ebony. The current catalogue also lists flamenco guitars, a CrossOver model built largely from thermally modified woods, and seven- and eight-string guitars at both master and professional level. The company says it introduced lattice and double-top bracing and a composite top in 2014, and that its lattice top is only 1.3 mm thick. Other features it lists are a flat “Invert” bridge, a monitor soundhole that helps the player hear the instrument, and an open, pierced headstock, which it calls its trademark. Each instrument in its newer range comes with a certificate naming the woods used and where they came from.

Design and documentation.

Two names came west after the Second World War from Schönbach in Bohemia, now Luby in the Czech Republic. Höfner was founded there by Karl Höfner in 1887 and now works in Baiersdorf in Franconia, where GEWA music took over its business on 1 April 2026 after an insolvency, with the brands held by a Thomann and GEWA holding company. Hoyer, founded in Schönbach by Franz Hoyer in 1874, was re-established at Tennenlohe near Erlangen in 1945 and stopped making guitars in 1987, German Wikipedia says; its website now announces a relaunch in 2027.

Hanika is a Baiersdorf neighbour. Helmut Hanika started his own firm in 1953, making archtop guitars, and later moved to classical guitars, from 1965 by the company’s account and in the 1970s by German Wikipedia’s; the business now belongs to his son Armin, and the company says its instruments are made mostly by hand.

Three are workshops founded by their makers. Lakewood, started in 1986 by Martin Seeliger, builds steel-string guitars at Buseck near Gießen; it says they are built in Germany. Teuffel is Ulrich Teuffel’s company in Neu-Ulm, founded in 1988, he says, and he builds the guitars himself. Marleaux is Gerald Marleaux’s bass workshop at Clausthal-Zellerfeld in the Harz, working since 1990, whose Consat Custom bass won a German musical instrument prize in 2017.

GEWA music is the odd one out, an instrument and accessory company rather than a single workshop: founded at Adorf in the Vogtland by Georg Walther in 1925, it spent five decades in Mittenwald before returning to Adorf, and says it makes products at German, European and Asian sites.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Still family-owned, still made in Baiersdorf.

Hanika guitars are still made in Baiersdorf. The company describes them as mostly handmade in the town’s “well-known manufactory” by a team of plucked-instrument makers and joiners, with CNC machining in use since 2003, when it took delivery of a five-axis mill; in 2012 its timber store and part of its pre-production moved to an industrial estate in Baiersdorf for lack of space. German Wikipedia names Hanika and Höfner as the two traditional instrument makers in the town. No outside owner appears in the sources we checked; the website names Armin Hanika as proprietor.

Its most distinctive recent work concerns wood. In 2018, the company says, after research with the Technical University of Dresden, it introduced the Nativ series: concert guitars free of tropical woods, built mostly from thermally modified native timber, which it saws itself so that the whole trunk is used. It says the project was named a “ZIM craft project of the year 2019” — ZIM is the German federal economics ministry’s innovation programme for small and medium-sized firms — with the certificate presented in Berlin in May 2019; we give that as the company’s account. The best-documented player is the singer-songwriter Reinhard Mey, who wrote on his website in September 2011 that his guitar on tour was an Armin Hanika 1a PF with a spruce top and a cocobolo body.

For a design guide, Hanika shows how a family workshop can turn a structural detail — the pierced headstock — into a signature, and organise a range as a clear ladder of classes. Compare Framus, the Bubenreuth maker that bought Helmut Hanika’s first instruments, and Höfner, its neighbour in Baiersdorf. For this guide we use Franconian green, spruce and rosewood with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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