Mid 1960's Premier Acoustic

I've had this guitar a few months now. It's from the mid 1960's, and is believed to be the H165 made by Harmony and badged as Premier. It's all mahogany.





We moved my Maton EA80C and Martin D18VE to Australia in August, to take advantage of "free freight", as checked in baggage to get them relocated. That left the only acoustics in the house to be Allison's Harmony Sovereign with nylon strings, my Liberty LB100 nickel on brass resonator, and my 1953 Silvertone electric archtop, which to be honest doesn't sound that great until it's plugged in.

To fill the void of an around-the-house regular old steel string guitar, I picked up this little Premier for $89. You can see in the listing picture, it came with a Kent sound hole pickup, which actually works quite well. Those old Dakaware knobs are very cool. Despite being dried out, it was in reasonable shape if you can look beyond the several holes it has accumulated. Someone had also sanded the head stock and laid down some kind of green primer, for reasons unknown.

I spent time over this weekend working on it. I took it all apart, including complete disassembly of the tuners. I dressed the frets, with a couple of grades of steel wool, using a piece of a milk jug that I'd cut out with a slit to lay over the frets - so I could rub the fret wire itself without scratching the fret board. I also put the steel wool to work on the tail piece, the tuner strips, string posts, and the hex ferrules. I oiled the fret board, and the rest of the body, and put some new Martin 10-46 strings on. I oiled the tuners, and sanded lightly the head stock to take away most of that green primer, without going too deep.

I'm very happy with it! The trapeze tail piece is good in that it keeps the top of the body lifting when strings are attached traditionally to the bridge, so it's nice and flat. But this does make for a slightly different ring to the strings. It's not as warm as it might be, but the mahogany body makes up for that, it's a real treat for the price.

Guitars in Australia 2007

We took a trip to Australia in August 2007. Aside from the main purpose of the trip to catch up with family and friends, I had a chance to reconnect with some of my old guitars, and shake a couple of guit-hands for the first time.
I've had an Ibanez acoustic since I bought it from a guy I worked with in Tasmania in about 1990. To this day I've never seen another like it. It has lovely mother of pearl all over it, the headstock, fretboard markers, sound hole, pick guard... even the bridge. I took note of the model number stamped inside when I was back and started some research.
It's an Ibanez Artist model 2604.


There's a couple of mentions of the model here.
They suggest that Ibanez didn't make any acoustics until 1973. A forum poster seems to know that his model 2604 is a 1975 model. Then a picture of a 2604 from 1977 has some subtle differences. I figure this puts mine somewhere between 1973-1976. Although the catalog here doesn't have a year printed in it, the file name itself mentions 1976, so maybe it's first release was 1976. (Ibanez Catalogue - 914kb .pdf file)

My first Harmony guitar is also in Australia, a 1961 H47 Stratotone. This was a treat!

This was so hard to photograph to capture its natural colour. The image above is the most realistic, where all the others have so much red coming through in the photo's. It's just gorgeous. It is a hollow chambered body with a killer gold foil pickup on it made by Dearmond. We took this one along to our friend George's place to plug it in for the first time. Here I also test drove my THD Univalve amp for the first time.

That old, distinctly vintage Marshall quad box was once owned and toured with by Ian Moss, of Cold Chisel fame.

Plenty of toys here now that we're back home in USA, but I have some treats waiting for me back 'home'.

1956 Harmony Stratotone H44

This guitar came along by way of an auction last week. It was quite a mess, reportedly coming from an estate sale and I would say was carrying a small-medium sized sample of soil from each year since production. I had a very pleasant day on Sunday disassembling it and cleaning it up. All the parts on this beauty are original which is getting a little hard to come by, especially the scratch plate which tends to crack/break. Since only some of these models have date stamps, the only means I have to age the instrument with any accuracy is the codes on the potentiometers. They are Centralab pot's, one was made during the 44th week of 1955, the other during the 44th week of 1956. This puts production of the guitar itself somewhere late in 1956, over 50 years ago!

Speaking of the vulnerability of plastic of this age, the strap button on the butt end of the guitar was broken, and the jack plate is AWOL. I can find a similar modern strap button without too much trouble, but I will need to fashion a new jack plate. Since that had broken, I suspect the jack itself had been pulled out of the guitar from time to time, and there were obvious poor repair attempts to the wiring at this point. Concerning the electronics, the end at the jack is the only thing that has been tampered with, the rest is all original. I've made some clean cuts there and soldered in and insulated some decent wire running out to the jack.

Everything works perfectly. There are no crackles, hums, buzzes when operating the pot's or the switch. It sounds great! These are becoming sought after more and more for blues playing, they just have that wonderful tone. The neck all the way the through to the strap button is one piece of wood, there are no joins, so this further lends to its tone and sustain. (The curved sides of the guitar are made from two other pieces of wood joined to the centre of the body. Some of these models are made from one single piece of wood, but this particular one is a three piece.)

A before and after shot for you:

Here are some shots I took during the clean up. You can click the slideshow to visit the full sized album.




Thanks to the very well presented Harmony Database site, here is the original catalog description:

[1957 catalog] SOLID BODY ELECTRICS MODEL H44 - "STRATOTONE" SPANISH GUITAR The thin-body easy-to-handle Spanish Electric that has become a national favorite. Light weight, designed in smooth cutaway style for easy fingering down to the last fret. Has responsive built-in pickup, with tone and volume controls. Special slide-switch permits quick change from bass emphasis used for rhythm playing, to treble emphasis for take-off or solo work. Rosewood fingerboard and bridge, compensatinq tailpiece. Beautifully finished in a lustrous copper-bronze coating. Length overall 36", width 10 5/8", length of scale 25 1/4". Plastic guitar strap included.H44 Guitar $75.00 - C44 Carrying Case, extra $8.50
Original price
1956 : $72.50 1957 : $75.00
Verified production year(s) : 1953-1957others years possible, not verified.

More pictures, history, comments about Harmony and this guitar can be found here:
http://harmony.demont.net/model.php?modele=H44





Added 1/27/08:
Someone has referenced my blogs on their eBay listing, what an honour!