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.
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2 comments:
While I know nearly nothing about guitars, I love listening to people play them. So I was listening away to your video just now, and then I suddenly perked up about two minutes in. You played "Hole Hearted"! I love that song! I don't even know anyone else who even remembers or knows that song. I've been a huge fan of Extreme and Nuno Bettencourt since I was in middle school. I was supposed to marry Nuno, but then he went off and married Suze. lol
Thanks for the video! You are marvelous, and it's always a pleasure to hear you play. :) ~Tiffany
Wow Tiffany, thanks for the compliment!
I wanted to add some more about this guitar. Guitars were made for Premier by a few companies, and while this is still an all mahogany body, there are not enough identical comparisons to the Harmony H165 to make it a Harmony. But, it remains a sweet little guitar!
The deal just got sweeter today as well. I bought the guitar with the sound hole pickup for $89. I just sold the sound hole pickup for $89.99!!!
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