J35 or EPI Masterbilt

[zombywoof]

Harmony guitars?

 

Their neck designs in the 50s and early 60s at least were horrid, IMHO, unless one is wedded to the concept of a baseball bat shape.

 

 

I have an early block letter logo (making it a pre-1962) Sovereign in the house. I flippin' love the neck on it.

[milod]

Zombie...

 

Suits you, tickles me plumb to death. I hadda girlfriend in the mid 60s who had one; liked her, didn't care for the guitar even then, although the sound was fine and dandy. Had a cupla other Harmonies over the years; overbuilt, decent sound, necks too thick for comfort with what I did, and do on guitar.

 

My archtop from the '50s would be playable with what I do now if I could put an Gibson neck on it... which unfortunately wouldn't work since it has a 24" scale. Love everything about it except the neck. I guess I'd be willing to pay a decent luthier some hundreds to rebuild the neck somehow to roughly a thin taper type neck. Right now it sits in the case.

 

m

[zombywoof]

For me though there is something else about a guitar - call it heritage I guess. Every time I play a Harmony I think these are the guitars that launched tens of thousands of folks on a musical journey which they still are on. Or you play a Banner Gibson and know that guitar is the record of a specific time and place in history of which we will never see the likes of again. You think of iconic instruments like Leadbelly's big box Stella 12 string, Woody's SJ or Clarence's Martin D-28 with the enlarged soundhole and Gretsch fingerboard.

 

Americans did not invent the steel string guitar but they sure made its design and building into an art. Every guitar out there today owes a nod of thanks to what those guys at Gibson, Martin, Kay Kraft and others did so many years ago. Funny thing it often feels like we are still trying to catch up with them.

[ParlourMan]

Isn't it all just romantic notionary though? I mean really…..

 

The golden era… nobody thought it was 'golden' at the time… the 60's, well, loads of people thought it was miserable, now they champion it in hindsight… on our side one fella spooked everyone, he uttered "you've never had it so good" publicly, it dawned on folk that might possibly be true, then it all went downhill with great haste, still is…

 

Americana never existed, it was at best a fleeting second well remembered. Later depicted with loads of feelgood puffing, now everyone is a child of some halcyon era. C'mon, that's spoon-fed Hollywood nonsense. We're debating the romance of the first steps of mass production manufacturing for instruments here. C'mon, Mr Ford, the time and motion studies, they defined your country and your era especially in industry. Largely a lot of stereotypes stand because they're true, the French holiday in France, Americans buy American under the spell of some wild illusion that it's always better.

 

Please not I'm not attacking Americans, just pointing out the blindingly obvious. Luxembourgers? They just grill stuff and try to pretend they're taller than they are and take on Switzerland at their own game.

[Jerry K]

As myths go the one that says Gibson and Martin invented the modern flat-top steel string guitar is one of the truer ones out there!

 

Amazingly, the two companies still produce some of the best factory made steel string flat tops. For their size and class of manufacturing, I would venture to say they are still tops in the world. Most other manufacturers are imitating the designs of one, the other, or both.

 

Guitar makers of this class cannot voice every guitar slowly by hand. Naturally if you can afford it there are very small and small-medium shops that will do - for a price - all sorts of things a manufacturer cannot do on a higher volume production line. You can also get comparable care with a custom from Gibson or Martin.

 

I like the old brands and their traditions. It's a sentimental attachment that has grown as I have played them for forty odd years.

[milod]

I'll say this... America was most free and at its best perhaps as "land of opportunity" from about 1947 into the early '60s.

 

One couldn't say the same about most countries in Europe or Asia in that time period.

 

Politics at the international level were rough.

 

Guitars IMHO actually lost quality to an extent because there was so much demand. I dunno if a Leo Fender could make the sort of name he did with electric guitar designs in any other era because this was the bursting of the concept into a world overfilled with vacuum tubes left over from the war, etc.

 

IMHO the demand was so great I question the quality of a lot of the production from perhaps 1955 onward regardless of marque.

 

I think America's place in the guitar world is indeed largely in refining and almost literally defining high quality modern steel string and electric guitar variations based on a lot of work and innovation in the late 19th and 20th Centuries.

 

OTOH, anyone who doesn't recognize that there are luthiers and factories with highly skilled and caring workers elsewhere producing great guitars is being naive.

 

I know folks who've had the opportunity to regularly play a Strad. Yeah, it's the magic of the concept more than the specifics of the instrument. I respect that. OTOH, I'll wager an Epi Dot or LP of today at the same price point would have been some interesting competition for Gibson circa 1960-70.

 

m