Post by CTGull on Aug 7, 2021 18:37:05 GMT -5
I’ve been interesting in getting a Harmony H165 (all solid mahogany) for a while, but I wasn’t impressed with the sound of the one H162 (mahogany body, spruce top) I have. I love the look of the all mahogany guitar, but $300 for a possibly boxy sounding POS is a waste of money. Then I saw this. It looked like a Harmony H165, but it has plastic binding and SILVERTONE on the headstock. I did some research and found it is basically a Harmony H165, made only for the Sears 1966 Christmas catalog. I’d guess there were only a few thousand made. I’ve only found 4-5 that have been sold online. It looked to be in good shape, unlike most H165’s I see, all scratched up. The auction ended at 11:46pm, way past my bedtime, so I threw a number at it at 9pm and waited until the morning to see if I got lucky. I WON!! I probably paid a bit more that it is worth. But it should be a quick project to get it playing. Harmony neck resets are easier than vintage Yamaha’s.
They packed it in a box made of three square boxes inserted into each other (to make a longer box) and taped them together, but the assembly is two times thicker than it needed to be. And they must have used $30 of bubble wrap to fill it!! THANKS!! I can use that to ship guitars! Inside the bubble wrap, the guitar was packed in its original cardboard case. The put some crushed brown paper on top of the guitar, but nothing underneath, on the sides, or anywhere around the neck. Not great, but it made it OK. The strings were slacked, as requested. After taking some pics and measurements I tuned it to “D” with great difficulty. The tuners need to be lubricated and the tuner bushings are gone. I should have a set of replacement bushings somewhere. In case I can’t find them, I found the original vendor on eBay and ordered (2) more sets, $12 per set + tax & shipping = $30.10.
After tuning it I got a big shock. While with the ancient strings it doesn’t sound bad, the action is one of the highest I’ve seen, about .20”/.22”. And worse, the neck is bowed, and there’s no truss rod. I’ll know more once the neck is off.
So I removed the already loose pickguard, the 15th fret, drilled two steam holes, and removed the neck of with about 2 minutes of steam. And the neck is still bowed, high at the first few frets and a rise starting around the 10th fret, resulting in the fretboard extension is tipped up.
The plan is to make a relief cut in the top of the dovetail (under the fretboard) with a vibrating saw, steam the area, clamp the fretboard flat, and let it dry overnight. That should remove most of the upper bow. Then I will have to pull all of the rusty mint frets, sand the fretboard flat, recut the fret slots, and refret. It’s a lot of work, but it should be the best way to end up with a flat fretboard. I’ve read about using a clothes iron to heat the fretboard to soften the glue and clamp the fretboard flat or in a slight back bow. That sounds a bit unscientific, and I don’t want to deal with the fretboard possibly shifting and leaving an exposed edge that would need to be sanded and refinished.
So, unfortunately the bowed neck has turned a 3-4 day project into probably 1 week. Still not bad, but a lot more work than I anticipated.
There’s also a bit of a belly behind the bridge. It’s more obvious once I unbolted and popped the bridge off. I could add a custom Bridge Doctor, screwed to the top instead of the bridge. But, do I really want to add more mass to an already heavily braced top??
And the saddle is the typical .075” thick, glued in the slot. Since the bridge came off fairly easily, I will put it in my mini-milling machine to deepen and open the slot to .100”, and make a new higher saddle with a 16” radius.
Since I will be sanding the fretboard flat, I will probably change the Harmony standard 10” radius to modern standard 16”, since I have a long 16” radius sanding beam. The one disadvantage of that is more sanding. To change from 10” to 16” radius I’ll have to sand off .024” more wood in the middle to fully clean up the rough machining marks at the edges of the fretboard (at a 2.25” width).
Then it’s just a standard neck reset. Should be fun!!
They packed it in a box made of three square boxes inserted into each other (to make a longer box) and taped them together, but the assembly is two times thicker than it needed to be. And they must have used $30 of bubble wrap to fill it!! THANKS!! I can use that to ship guitars! Inside the bubble wrap, the guitar was packed in its original cardboard case. The put some crushed brown paper on top of the guitar, but nothing underneath, on the sides, or anywhere around the neck. Not great, but it made it OK. The strings were slacked, as requested. After taking some pics and measurements I tuned it to “D” with great difficulty. The tuners need to be lubricated and the tuner bushings are gone. I should have a set of replacement bushings somewhere. In case I can’t find them, I found the original vendor on eBay and ordered (2) more sets, $12 per set + tax & shipping = $30.10.
After tuning it I got a big shock. While with the ancient strings it doesn’t sound bad, the action is one of the highest I’ve seen, about .20”/.22”. And worse, the neck is bowed, and there’s no truss rod. I’ll know more once the neck is off.
So I removed the already loose pickguard, the 15th fret, drilled two steam holes, and removed the neck of with about 2 minutes of steam. And the neck is still bowed, high at the first few frets and a rise starting around the 10th fret, resulting in the fretboard extension is tipped up.
The plan is to make a relief cut in the top of the dovetail (under the fretboard) with a vibrating saw, steam the area, clamp the fretboard flat, and let it dry overnight. That should remove most of the upper bow. Then I will have to pull all of the rusty mint frets, sand the fretboard flat, recut the fret slots, and refret. It’s a lot of work, but it should be the best way to end up with a flat fretboard. I’ve read about using a clothes iron to heat the fretboard to soften the glue and clamp the fretboard flat or in a slight back bow. That sounds a bit unscientific, and I don’t want to deal with the fretboard possibly shifting and leaving an exposed edge that would need to be sanded and refinished.
So, unfortunately the bowed neck has turned a 3-4 day project into probably 1 week. Still not bad, but a lot more work than I anticipated.
There’s also a bit of a belly behind the bridge. It’s more obvious once I unbolted and popped the bridge off. I could add a custom Bridge Doctor, screwed to the top instead of the bridge. But, do I really want to add more mass to an already heavily braced top??
And the saddle is the typical .075” thick, glued in the slot. Since the bridge came off fairly easily, I will put it in my mini-milling machine to deepen and open the slot to .100”, and make a new higher saddle with a 16” radius.
Since I will be sanding the fretboard flat, I will probably change the Harmony standard 10” radius to modern standard 16”, since I have a long 16” radius sanding beam. The one disadvantage of that is more sanding. To change from 10” to 16” radius I’ll have to sand off .024” more wood in the middle to fully clean up the rough machining marks at the edges of the fretboard (at a 2.25” width).
Then it’s just a standard neck reset. Should be fun!!
