1960s Harmony H1213 Electrified Archtop Guitar

I took this late '50s or early '60s box in trade from a friend of mine for work. It arrived pretty disheveled but is now really fun. I'm not a huge fan of the acoustic tone of these all-birch Harmony archtops, though it's definitely a useable sound in a pinch. I like them much better when they've been fitted with an electric pickup and used like a poor-man's ES-125. That's why I've done that here, though unlike an ES-125, this has an adjustable-poles Alnico-magnet mini-humbucker and so it has a jazzy "Johnny Smith" sound to it rather than a P-90 growl-factory sound.

It's a bit beat-up around the edges, but the guitar itself is nice and stable and looks pretty good overall. While you could mic it up for recording, it's really the freshly-minted electric sound that it's got going for it. I think anyone playing anything rootsy or vintage-y will appreciate the vibe, though without a cutaway and with a bigger neck, you're not going to be wanting to play hero-guitarist lead work on it.

Repairs included: a neck reset (via slipped-joint plus hidden bolt reinforcement at the heel), many seam repairs to the top and back, a brace reglue, cleats/extra fill to a previously-repaired top crack on the lower bout, repair to some smaller cracks on the back near the heel (caused by botched old seam repairs in the past), a new bone nut install, new rosewood adjustable bridge fit/install, pickup fit and install, and wiring harness. The harness has a 500k volume pot, vintage Kay lever-knob, Switchcraft jack, and is fully-shielded.

Setup notes: the neck is straight and it plays bang-on with 1/16" overall action at the 12th fret. It's strung with 46w-10 gauges with an 18w wound-G string, but there's no reason it couldn't take up to 11s with a wound-G. The bridge is compensated for said wound-G, so one would need to swap the bridge top to get a "normal" unwound-G set of strings on it. It's old-fashioned, what can I say? There's plenty of adjustment room up/down at the bridge.

Scale length: 25 1/8"

Nut width: 1 3/4"

String spacing at nut: 1 1/2"

String spacing at bridge: 2 3/16"

Body length: 19 1/2"

Lower bout width: 15 7/8"

Waist width: 9 5/8"

Upper bout width: 11 1/2"

Side depth at endpin: 3 3/8"

Top wood: solid birch

Back/sides wood: solid birch

Neck wood: poplar

Bracing type: tonebar

Fretboard: ebonized maple/pearwood, bone nut

Bridge: rosewood adjustable

Neck feel: medium C/D shape, 10" board radius

Condition notes: there's the old crack (repaired) in the top and smaller cracks on the back (repaired) as well. There's minor scuffing/scratching/finish wear throughout but it looks nice overall. There were a lot of old seam repairs and I re-repaired a lot of them, but the back overlapped the sides in a number of places, so I had to trim it down to fit. It's not obvious in the photos as the paint blends in with the "white wood," but you can see this where the "painted-on" binding yields to sealed bare wood here and there along the back/top seams.