Airline 7215 Stratotone by Harmony

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This Harmony-built hollow-bodied Airline 7215 is a rare model in the Stratotone family of guitars, as there is no Harmony own-branded equivalent. They were sold in 1963-64 via the Montgomery Wards catalogue. The pictured example, said to be in mint condition, is currently being offered for sale on eBay in the UK with a Buy It Now price of £975.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Harmony H59 Rocket in Hotrod finish

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I think I've gone on record before as saying I am not a fan of pin-striping, hotrod finishes and all that kind of thing, but - cliché or not - on this Harmony H59 Rocket I simply cannot deny that it looks fantastic. I'm going to borrow from the eBay listing and allow the seller to tell you about it:

This is a unique opportunity to own an amazing completely redone Harmony Rocket. I purchased this from an avid collector who loved rockabilly music and hot rods. He took his favorite vintage rocket and had it “hot rodded”. He had his luthier overhaul everything. He redressed the frets, he replaced the floating wooden bridge with a modern roller bridge, he replaced the original tuners with a set of Grovers and readjusted everything to maximize playability. To complete his rockabilly/hot rod project he sent the guitar a custom bike shop in California to paint an amazing professional hot rod flame job paint on the body. The paint metallic paint just leaps out and in the light and looks incredible. The back of the neck is super smooth and plays like butter. Overall the guitar plays and sounds phenomenal! This is easily the best playing Harmony or Silvertone I’ve ever encountered.

The guitar’s neck is very comfortable and is shaped like a 59’ roundback, it isn’t super large like the old Silvertone archtops and it isn’t skinny either…just nice and meaty. There are no dead spots on the neck and no buzzing along the board. The frets are vintage and are shaped like the thin/wide vintage Gibson style. The famous Dearmond gold foil pickups sound big and bold clean and thick and juicy when overdriven. All the tone/volume knobs work and are not scratchy, however two of them don’t turn as easily as the others. They still turn just fine but just not as freely as the others. The pickup selector works and feels very solid. The guitar stays in tune like a dream. Overall an incredible instrument that is perfect for the studio or the stage.

To my knowledge everything is original except for the paint finish, the headstock decal, the replaced tuners, the replaced bridge, and the matching pick gold pickguard. The guitar is in very good condition, all the binding is very tight with no cracking. No major dings, scratches or blemishes...

It just screams "Rockabilly" at you, doesn't it? (I have to admit that I do hate that expression "plays like butter". That seems to be one of those eBay guitar listing clichés. For me, it just conjures up an image of a really digustingly greasy guitar.)

Thanks to Julian Woods for pointing this one out.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Harmony H82 electric tenor banjo

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's another electric banjo, this time it's a Harmony 4-string tenor and, unlike the previous ones we have looked at, it doesn't have a skin top to it - so that purists may argue that it's actually a tenor guitar. It has an electric guitar style magnetic pickup mounted onto a spruce top. The seller has copied out the marketing blurb from the 1955 Harmony catalogue that this appeared in, and which I in turn shall reproduce here:

A completely NEW instrument!

Harmony Electro Banjo (Pat. Apppl'd For).

A new instrument in which banjo tone is created electrically - an achievement of Harmony research and ingenuity.

Tuned and played as the traditional banjo. Though the magic of an ingenious bridge and electronic pickup assembly, mounted on a resonant spruce sounding board, it produces the familiar crisp banjo tone so popular today - through an amplifier.

Finished in Jubilee Red and white. Harmo-metal band with fluted red plastic insert at top edge. Pearlette inlaid fingerboard, with edge binding.

Individual tuning keys.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Harmony Meteor archtop electric

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This 1970s-era Harmony Meteor archtop fits the bill quite nicely, and I'm always happy to find something interesting for my Southpaw friends who all too often have the fuzzy end of the lollipop when it comes to guitar choice.

Its inspirations are all too obvious, but it has a number of features of its own that characterize it as something more individual, such as that big ol' Harmony headstock, the stencil-like f-holes, the bolt-on neck, and those DeArmond Gold Tone pickups.

Strangely, there's a strap button mounted on the lower horn, so I guess some right-handed person (a Northpaw?) has previously been playing this. Somehow there seems something wrong about that; lefties don't get enough choice of guitars as it is, without the righties taking their instruments.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

TrueTone vintage guitar ... any more info?

guitarz.blogspot.com:

James from Krazy Cat Music in San Antonio, TX, has been in touch again with another interesting vintage guitar to show us. He writes:

We've been getting a lot of cool old cheesy guitars lately; this one's a bit harder to find info on. TrueTones are Kay and Harmony guitars with different headstocks, and were sold at Western Auto in the 60s. This one's got two pickups, two volumes and two tones, 3 way toggle. Still has the original cheesy wooden bridge on it. 3-bolt neck. This sucker's got killer vintage tone. Not sure of the model on this one, if anybody knows drop us a line.

If anyone knows anything more about this guitar, please share with us the comments below and we'll pass any on info onto James. Thanks!

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

1959 Silvertone 1423 aka Jupiter

guitarz.blogspot.com

Another baby of the inevitable cross-brand electric guitar industry in the 60s, this Silvertone 1423 was actually built by Harmony (as the H49 Stratotone Jupiter), equipped with DeArmond pickups and released exclusively in black / gold sparkle finish. Its chambered body made it very light and highly appreciated by beginners.

Silvertone had its models based on Danelectro, Harmony, Kay, National or Teisco guitars - they were actually manufactured by these companies with slight variation and branded by Silvertone that was the music instrument brand of the Sears Department Stores from the 30s until the early 70s.  

Bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Harmony H82G REBEL Hollowbody

guitarz.blogspot.com:
This American-made Harmony hollowbody guitar from 1972 features an interesting alternative to the usual volume and tone potentiometers, or even the Italian-style pushbutton switches and rollers, with these mixer-like faders. However, they might not be the best design if you sweat a lot on stage.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

1965 Airline Bobkat

guitarz.blogspot.com

I really like the shape of this vintage Airline Bobcat, though I'm not so sure that you can really call it an Airline Bobcat: it seems that the model is originally a Harmony H14 Bobcat that was reissued as Airline 7250 - another complicated intertwining brands issue typical of the 60s (maybe future guitar historians will feel the same about the guitars of the 10s cheap Chinese era).

I've never played a guitar with a single pickup in the middle of the body but it feels right, though information I've had so far about nodal points (where the strings vibrates at their best and the pickups should be) is always confused and contradictory...

So any comments about Harmony/Airline and nodal points/central pickup issues are welcome!

bertram

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