Silvertone S1477

This is a Silvertone S1477, which has a date marking of March 24, 1965 on the back of the pickguard. It is Harmony-made, and is a "silverfoil" version of the Harmony H15. Can you imagine a 1964 guitar looking so good?? Well, you can now!



I took a chance when purchasing this guitar, given that it was advertised as "not working", and I bid on the auction accordingly, allowing for the expense of possible pickup rewinding. What better outcome, than to find that there was just a poor connection in the wiring that I was able to fix! This thing is marvellous! I stripped it all the way down on the weekend. Aside from general cleaning, I addressed the neck by getting a toothbrush into the fret/fretboard joints, dressed the frets with steel wool, and oiled the fretboard.
I also completely dismantled the tuners, oiling the gears, and polishing the string posts and ferrules with steel wool. I cleaned up the pickguard and applied contact cleaner to all the potentiometers.
This thing plays like water. It has fairly light guage strings on, but with the shorter neck scale on this model, it is so easy to play.
I have found the bridge pickup sounds a little quieter than the neck pickup, due to no fault, but since the bridge is raised quite a bit to get good neck action and no buzz, the strings are a little further away from the bridge pickup than they are from the neck pickup. This actually suits me quite well. I LOVE the neck pickup sound, and have always found the bridge pickup sound from e.g. a Fender Statocaster to be a little too shrill for my liking.
I think I will enjoy this one the most in the neck pickup position, but sometimes in the middle position, blending both pickups.