Roll Call: 1970s Harmony H-802 Electric Guitar

A local customer owns this '70s Harmony H-802 and it's a Japanese-made import rather than a US-made product. This same guitar model has its roots in the Teisco "Tulips" from the '60s and was built right into the early '90s in, basically, this format.

While I didn't have time (or leeway) to do all that it needs, I did fix what was asked-for ("...it's not working when it's plugged-in") and got it playing as spot-on as it could minus the fret level/dress it really needs. Sometimes an owner of an instrument won't really understand that their instrument needs more than a nudge to make it even worthwhile to get on my bench and take-up my time (I hate leaving things undone for future generations) and so you have to just eat a bit of time and do the right thing anyway.

In this case it got wiring fixes and setup-side fixes before leaving for home and as a result, someone will actually play this when they realize it's a decent-playing guitar with a neat sound.

During setup I compensated and re-seated the original bridge for 3-wound, 3-plain, modern stringing. Intonation is, of course, improved. Note the real lightweight flatwounds (with unwound G) the owner has on it... probably 30 years old but still going!

The inside of these instruments is very simple -- two "on-off" pickup switches plus master volume and tone and a jack. Unfortunately the jacks are always bad (they're just cheap and junky) and the original wiring scheme usually gets faults because one of the pots loosens-up and then twists and breaks connections as the junky little wire gets wrapped around it.

I just remove all the bad, keep the good (in this case the pots are fine but the jack and tone capacitor had to go), and rewire with thicker-gauge stuff. This now has a standard-issue, Tele-style volume/tone wiring pattern which modern eyes will understand right away if this needs to get repaired in the future.

I had to use a Forstner bit to get a little extra depth clearance for the (longer) Switchcraft jack tip as well as the rest of the wiring harness.