It Ain't a Gibson but Hey....

[zombywoof]

...it was dirt cheap. I went out to lunch the other day to pick up a Uke for my 7 year old daughter which I did but somehow in the process a Harmony 1260 Sovereign followed me home. Appears to be an early one, made between 1958 and 1961. It is well played but structurally sound. Very playable although a neck reset is probably in its future.

 

Back in the early and mid-1960s alot of us cut our teeth on a Sovereign. Put a fresh set of Black Diamonds on them and they would ring until Kingdom Come.

 

Nah, it ain't a J-45 or a Martin D-18 but it will get you in the ballpark. Big old 16" lower bout. Nice spirit shellac spruce top and a one-piece mahogany back (try finding that these days on any guitar that will not empty your bank account). Pinless bridge. The neck has 1950s Gibson roundback feel to it although it is beefier. Loud enough the scare the hellhound off your trail. Possibly the most resonant bass I have ever heard.

 

Later today I am going to slap a DeArmond 210 pickup across the soundhole and plug her into my recently resurrected 1966 Silvertone Twin Twelve amp.

 

 

[BigKahune]

I got my first real six string, bought it at the five and dime

Played it till my fingers bled, was the summer of '69 . . .

 

Close . . . very close.

 

Them old Hamony guitars . . . yep, my first was a Harmony.

 

Great to see one the old girls. Nice snag.

[zombywoof]

I got my first real six string' date=' bought it at the five and dime

Played it till my fingers bled, was the summer of '69 . . .

 

Close . . . very close.

 

Them old Hamony guitars . . . yep, my first was a Harmony.

 

Great to see one the old girls. Nice snag.

 

 

 

She looked like she needed a good home.

[ksdaddy]

Look around inside because most old Harmonys had the date: S-66 = Spring 1966, F-69 = Fall 1969 etc.

[zombywoof]

Look around inside because most old Harmonys had the date: S-66 = Spring 1966' date=' F-69 = Fall 1969 etc.[/quote']

 

I also have a late 1940s Stella badged Harmony (now that one meets the definition of P.O.S. guitar) and neither that nor the Sovereign have a date stamp visible through the soundhole or inside the top near the neck. Seems like Harmony did not use the stamp, at least consistently, until the 1960s.

 

Wha is odd about this Sovereign is that it does not appear to ever have had a pickguard. This was common on the 1940s and 1950s 1203 Sovereigns but not the 1260.

[bkharmony]

Awesome. I love the old Harmony flat-tops. My first guitar was a 68 Rocket.

[Murph]

I too cut my teeth on an old Harmony box.....

[milod]

I hadda cupla Harmonys. Girl friend had a Sovereign.

 

I recall thinking all of their necks were a little thick, but they all sounded good for the price tag and were perhaps, if anything, a bit over-engineered.

 

It's too bad they couldn't figure how to keep up with the rising import market. They tended to be well-made for the price tag if, as I said, perhaps a little over-engineered to compensate for what may have been lesser quality wood or wood aging processes. I dunno why.

 

Nowadays they're a bit dated but frankly I think they sound pretty decent, either the better acoustics or the electrics.

 

They also had an early EA with a mag pickup just after the last fret on the fingerboard where it extended toward the soundhole, as I recall - but in the folkie days, I never knew anybody who plugged in... Hmmmm. Big round wooden knobs on the thing, too, just as on some of their better electric archtops. Yeah, I had a jazz version of one of their better guitars. Single neck pickup. Sounded pretty good, but the neck was far too rounded for me.

 

m

[ksdaddy]

ksdaddy story time. In other words "I couldn't make this s____ up".

 

My brother gave me an old Kay when he got his Fender Mustang. It was awful. Torture device and nothing more. That was in '67 or so.

 

He went into the army in '71. When he came home from Korea in the fall of '73 he brought a '72 Harmony archtop with him. I don't think he actually brought it home from Korea but who knows.... Anyway, I fell in love with that thing. I asked him if he would sell it to me, as if I had two nickels to rub together. I never got an answer. It was in the case under his bed and I would frequently pull it out of the case and pick at it. I didn't dare say anything to my parents because they were always very territorial as to personal possessions. If something belonged to one member of the family it was a heinous crime for anyone else to touch it.

 

My brother's last six months were in Ft Polk, LA. When he came home in April of '74 the first thing he did was buy a used Jazzmaster and the biggest Traynor amp I've ever seen in my life. The speaker cabinet hung out of the trunk of my mother's Impala about 3 feet. I thought that was a good time for me to ask again about the Harmony.

 

"Whaddya mean sell it to you? I GAVE you that thing when I was home last fall!"

 

:P

 

Really?

 

I snuck into your room for six months for nothing?

 

But.... I know my brother. He has never told the truth in his life about anything. He makes up stories and eventually believes them himself. He may have convinced himself he gave it to me but really never did. Regardless, I was appreciative and ecstatic. I was such a good brother after that! In fact two month later I rolled his '71 Nova over onto it's roof I was such a great brother. (Whole 'nother story...)

 

I kept that Harmony until around February of '77 when I swapped it, a Texas Instruments TI-30 calculator, and a $20 bill for a 1963 Danelectro.

[zombywoof]

Part of the musical coming of age way back when was to want to dump the el cheapo Harmony or whatever for a "real" guitar.

 

The joke is now you have to pay, in some cases, some pretty hefty prices to buy that old lo-fi cool gear back.

[zombywoof]

He went into the army in '71. When he came home from Korea in the fall of '73 he brought a '72 Harmony archtop with him.

 

Great flippin' story ksdaddy. That '72 would have been one of the last guitars made before the company went belly up.

[onewilyfool]

These Harmony Sovereign's are great guitars.....ladder braced, all solid woods, (In fact the back is a SINGLE piece of solid mahogany, no center seam, trees were big back then.) Mine has what appears to be a Adirondak top, Brazillian rosewood Finger board, put together with Hyde Glue, solid one piece Mahogany neck.....Imagine what it would cost to make one of these, these days???? The claim to fame of these old boxes, is that they have such a good Bass response....and a lively open sound because of those ladder bracing.....Harmony at the time these were made, was probably the biggest guitar company in the world!!! Buy USA is my motto!!