1965 HOFNER ARTIST 185 Sunburst 2 Pickups All Original Made in Germany Comes in Hard case code BA223
Used but not overused, bumps and scratches everywhere.
The bass is solid, well intonated, straight neck, good frets.
New circuit and CTS pots, great strong signal from the two original pickups.
Introduced in late 1962 as the main two pickup bass for the UK market, it
replaced the Hofner “Solid Bass” which was actually the European market Hofner
182 model. The Artist bass was called the 185 model by Hofner in Europe. The
“offset-waist” body design and large strip fret markers made it a very
attractive instrument. All Artist basses made for the UK were finished in red –
usually red lacquer but a few were also produced in red vinyl. A bolt-one single
piece neck was used together with a bound rosewood fingerboard. Larger than the
usual Hofner tuners for that era were fitted. Electrical controls initially were
simply a rotary volume and tone control for each pickup; the pickups being
turned off by turning down the volume controls. Later Artist basses had two
individual pickup slider switches mounted on the treble side of the scratchplate.
The 2 special bass pickups are switchable so you can get 3 different pickup
combinations.
The 185 has 2 volume and 2 tone controls.
One idea of the sound: https://youtu.be/I8eJ4SvCxQk