We received the Ern Prestige and my guitar player and I were struck on how playable this instrument is. We liked its comfortable neck of medium thickness and width, loud acoustic tone and its light 7.2-pound weight made possible by (among other things) its 15-mm thick mahogany top.

We plugged into to an original stock Fender Deluxe Reverb and got sounds ranging from high-gain Rock to Blues to Country or even Smooth Jazz with this super versatile guitar. Plus all these sounds came without feedback or microphonics. This guitar is easy to solo on with good access to the upper frets and great for Les Paul-players looking for a lighter guitar that doesn't play, look or feel cheap.

The 2010 Hoyer Ern Prestige is available with maple tops in natural honey burst (like ours) or in dark red. Our model had a kind of flamed maple bookmatched carved top, mahogany body, ebony fretboard and bone nut. There are 22 medium frets on a 24 3/4-inch scale neck with large reversed cloud inlays (opposite to those like on a BC Rich Supreme), chrome hardware and knobs, Hoyer tuners with pearl buttons, a Hoyer Tune-O-Bridge, a strings-through-the-body design and two Hoyer humbucker (both splittable) HHB-100B and HHB-100 N pickups.