I’m in awe of home guitar builders. There are plenty of examples of homemade MadCat tributes out there, but it’s no easy feat. Most of these partcasters start with a Harley Benton TE-80. These are ideal because they are inexpensive, and are not bad guitars at all for the money. The body top looks very similar to the original MadCat bookmatching, and it’s easy to find the leopard print scratch plates to complete the look. With a bit of attention to the shape of the neck, and the addition of a Hohner Limited Edition sticker on the headstock, the look is almost perfect, for a relatively low cost.

What I don’t understand is why home builders would want to replicate one of the MadCat tributes that Hohner have produced down the years. These are all flawed in some way – most of the scratchplates are not correct, and the shape of the headstock is wrong on all of them. Each of those guitars have a place in history, but are they are not worth copying.

When I saw this pop up on eBay today, it made me wince. This guitar is not a Hohner The Prinz. It doesn’t look like an original MadCat. It is pulled together using all the wrong parts, and it has a Hohner The Prinz logo rather than an original Hohner Limited Edition logo.

It might sound wonderfully funky, but it doesn’t look right. And it certainly isn’t what it claims to be. Buyers beware.