1965 Harmony H1203 Sovereign 000-Sized Flattop Guitar

This is the last of four H1203s I've worked on in recent memory and it's quite clean for its age, totally original except for its saddle, and crack-free. There's some pickwear around the pickguard and the usual weather-check and UV-darkening to the finish, but otherwise it's pretty tidy. After work (a neck reset, fret level/dress, pickguard reglue, bridge reglue, and new saddle), it plays on-the-dot and with a straight neck and functioning truss rod.

The top is solid spruce and the back, sides, and neck are solid mahogany. Both the bridge and board are rosewood. These have ladder-braced tops and a longer scale, and I think of them has having a  dry and chunky Gibson LG-1 sort of vibe with maybe a bit more of a "woody" bottom-end. They make perfect fingerpickers and good, old-timey-sounding flatpickers.

Specs are: 25 1/8" scale, 1 3/4" nut width, 1 1/2" string spacing at the nut, 2 1/4" spacing at the bridge, 15 1/4" lower bout, 11 5/8" upper bout, and 3 3/4" depth at the endblock. The neck has a medium, C/D profile to the rear and a ~12" radius to the board. While the neck itself is straight, the fretboard extension dips a bit over the body. This was true both before and after the neck reset. Action is spot-on at 3/32" EA and 1/16" DGBE at the 12th fret, strung with 54w, 40w, 30w, 22w, 16, 12 strings.

The new saddle is compensated and plastic. I've been finding I like the tone of a plastic saddle (like the original ones on these) better than bone as they warm them up just a hair.

While it's hard to see in the pictures, much of the mahogany really pops in the sun under the gloss finish. A lot of it has some nice, mixed-figuring in it.