1950s Harmony H610 Gene Autry Melody Ranch (X-Braced) Parlor Guitar

So, these guitars are way cool even before you pick on one. I mean, it's a Gene Autry guitar. It's got stencils of a cowboy, lasso, cattle, and the range. It's sunburst. It's little. What's not to love, huh? It's pure Americana marketing bliss.

I've worked-on and sold a few of these in the past, but this is the first one I've heard with proper x-bracing installed under the hood. It's so much more fun because of it -- fuller-sounding, chunkier, more flatpicking-friendly, and generally just "more." Mr. Nat Adams (click here for his Reverb page, click here for his blog) has been hacking-up old Harmony and Kay projects in the Baxendale tradition -- removing the backs, yanking the original top ladder bracing, and rebracing to an x-pattern) of late, and this is one he did-over earlier this year.

Under the hood, he's installed single-tonebar, lightly-cut, scalloped x-bracing on the top and thinner, lighter ladder-bracing on the back. At the same time he gave the neck a reset, refretted the board, made a new ebony bridge, and cut a bone saddle and nut for it. While it was close to ready-to-go when it arrived here for consignment via its current owner, I did a little extra to spiff it up, and now it's playing bang-on and feeling primed and ready.

Repairs included: a new (taller) compensated bone saddle, fret level/dress, side dots install, minor cosmetic work to back/side seams, minor cosmetic work at the heel/fretboard extension, cleaning, and setup.

Setup notes: action is bang-on fast at 3/32" EA and 1/16" DGBE at the 12th fret. The neck is straight, the frets are in good order, and it's strung with 52w, 38w, 28w, 22w, 16, 12 gauges. This is basically an "11s" set mixed with a "12s" set at the top. Regular 54w-12 gauges were fine on this, too, though I think the relaxed middle strings let the guitar breathe a bit. These have pretty short scale lengths so tension is pretty slack to begin-with.

Scale length: 24 1/8"

Nut width: 1 11/16"

String spacing at nut: 1 1/2"

String spacing at bridge: 2 1/4"

Body length: 17 3/4"

Lower bout width: 13 1/8"

Waist width: 8 1/8"

Upper bout width: 9 1/2"
Side depth at endpin: 3 5/8"

Top wood: solid spruce

Back/sides wood: solid maple

Bracing type: x w/one tonebar

Fretboard: ebonized something-or-other, bone nut
Neck wood: poplar

Bridge: actual ebony, bone saddle

Neck feel: medium C/slight V-shape, ~10" board radius

Condition notes: it's crack-free save for two smaller previously-repaired hairline cracks at the bass-waist-side. There's a bit of muck-up around the back/side seams from old glue, general usewear  and pickwear throughout, some chipping-out on the fretboard at the fret slots around the fretboard extension (very common on these mysterywood Harmony fretboards -- they dry-out and get brittle with age), and the bracing, bridge, saddle, and nut are all replacements.