1950s Harmony H44 Stratotone Electric Guitar

The thing about early-'50s H44s is that they're a "holy grail" instrument for Harmony electric collectors. As such, they only come around every now and then and at what, on the surface, appear to be insane prices for a very basic guitar. This one's owned by a local friend of mine and he brought it in for consignment. Like the other two of these I've had the chance to strum, it played like garbage as it was when it came in -- high action, an ungrounded wiring harness going zzt-zzt, and the joy of playing out-of-tune up the neck. That's not for me, folks.

I'd been trying to persuade the owner to bring this in to get fixed-up properly for ages, so I guess I got my wish in a sideways move, huh? Now that I've done all the work on it, the lust for these instruments becomes apparent -- this really is a very cool rig with it playing right. It has a voice that flits between what I come to expect from a hollowbody jazz box from the late '40s and a "normal" solidbody electric from the '50s. The neck is big and round and has the full-scale 25 1/8" format and wider string spacing of a comparable Harmony acoustic, too -- unlike their later forays into 24" scales and non-tapered neck profiles on most of their electrics.

Work included: a fret level/dress, a ton of cleaning, reprofiling of the original bridge and compensation (for 3 wound, 3 plain) of its bone saddle, drilling-for and installing a ground wire to the tailpiece, shielding and sprucing-up of the original wiring and harness cavity, conversion of the pickup to adjustable-height (it was previously riveted onto the pickguard), replacement older strap buttons, and a good setup. It has a straight neck and plays with 1/16" overall action at the 12th fret -- just a teensy hair higher on the low EA strings. I have it strung with 46w-10 gauges and it's in good health, now.

Scale length: 25 1/8"
Nut width: 1 3/4"
String spacing at nut: 1 1/2"
String spacing at saddle: 2 1/4"

Body length: 15 1/4"
Lower bout width: 10 1/2"
Upper bout width: 9"

Side depth at endpin: 1 3/4"

Body wood: poplar
Neck wood: poplar
Fretboard: rosewood

Neck shape: 12" radius w/medium-to-big C-shaped rear

Bridge: original, rosewood/bone

Nut: original bone

Condition notes: tons of finish weather-checking and wear and tear, non-original strap buttons, and the aforementioned alterations to get it to play correctly. The bridge is wedge-shaped on its base from sanding it to fit the neck's pitch and the treble side of its foot has a small crack (repaired) in it, but it's not a structural issue. The guitar is 100% original save the extra ground wire and the replacement strap buttons. There's a small plugged hole on the bass side of the heel where someone used to have an eyelet installed to attach a strap to.

I love the "atomic" Stratotone stencil.

The original DeArmond pickup is going strong. Balance is never perfect on these, but it does sound great. Note that the rivets that would've been on either side of it are replaced with machine screws and springs which allow up/down movement of the pickup like on a Fender design.

As-original, the pickup's mount meant that when playing up the neck the high E string fretted-out against the top beyond the 14th fret -- so it had to be modified. I did find some neat old machine screws, though, which might as well be original in looks.

The slider switch engages tone-bypass or tone-in-circuit modes. That gives you two voices on the quick.

You can see that I've both angled the bridge and done some recutting of the bone saddle to add proper compensation for 3-wound, 3-plain (modern) stringing.

Check out the lower-bout arm-rub wear! It's right down to the sealer coat -- just like the back of the neck.

Here's a picture of the body rotated so you can see the reflectivity of the cool copper finish.

The soft, complicated curves of the body's rear shape where the neck and cutaway meet are just too cool.

The amp-board/circuit-board material that the jack is mounted to appears to be original. Weird, huh?

Finally, here's how the wiring looks inside -- with my new copper-tape shielding installed and a ground wire coming to the tailpiece.

Here's a shot of the pickup's rear before I converted it to an adjustable-height arrangement.