1972 Harmony H1260 "Sovereign" Flattop Jumbo Guitar

Another big Sov! These super-dreadnought, ladder-braced, solid-woods guitars are popular when I have them in the inventory -- they sound big, have comfortable necks, and after work play just as well as your average Martin, Gibson, or Guild from the time. They're just -- different!

This is customer Sovereign jumbo #2 this week and it got the same as the last one in terms of work: neck reset, fret level/dress, new saddle, nut, a good setup, and a replacement pickguard. This one had its original pickguard, though it was (at some point) screwed onto the top and a quick trace of the old one let me put a new sticky-backed one in its place.

This guitar has no cracks and is all original save for the saddle, nut, and pickguard. These have solid spruce 16" wide tops (ladder-braced) over solid mahogany back and sides. The neck is truss-rodded and mahogany while the board and bridge are both rosewood.

This Sov has the standard specs -- 1 11/16" nut width and a medium C-profile neck shape.

The board is rosewood, radiused (14"), has original frets with almost full height even after a level/dress, and the dots are faux-pearl.

The new bone saddle is nice, tall, and compensated. I elongated and deepened the slot so that it'd resist the tension from the much-taller new saddle. Strings are my "balanced tension" lights at 54w, 40w, 30w, 22w, 17, 13. They sound nice and full on the 25 1/4" scale.

Action is standard spot-on 1/16" DGBE and 3/32" EA at the 12th fret, the neck is straight, and the truss works.

Huge, isn't it?

The heel cap has "outgassed" and cracked in a few places and there's a filled tiny hole on the back of the heel where someone had a strap button (poorly) installed.