1933 Supertone (Harmony) Size 5 Terz Guitar

My friend and consignor Michael sent this little very-short-scale Harmony-made Supertone in a bit ago and another customer wanted it for himself so I threw it into his repair schedule. It's a "Size 5" (or "terz") instrument and has a 21 3/4" scale or so (I can't exactly remember, now) which means while you can tune it like a normal guitar, it sounds best restrung for "Nashville" tuning or at least tuned-up G-to-G or A-to-A over normal E-to-E pitch. The owner has it currently in G-to-G with 46w-10 extra light strings installed.

Aside from the neck reset, fretboard reglue, fretwork, and other stuff this needed, I also played a bit with the bridge setup. Usually these little Harmony boxes sound kind-of dead when you get a good pin-style bridge installed on them. The bridge occupies so much real estate that the top sounds damped and thunky.

This time around I fit an adjustable, tailpiece-style, archtop-style bridge and added a modified mandolin tailpiece to hold the strings. I used a 1920s capo (cut-down) to serve as a "downpressure bar" behind the bridge. It's adjustable and mounted on springs so it won't rattle when de-strung. This allows the user to impart some of the "pin-bridge" vibe into the sound and it works. Since taking photos I added some cute little "batwing" embellishments off of an old Framus to cover-up more of the exposed old bridge area, but even if it's looking a little funky, this setup is a lot more practical (action can be adjusted easily) and sounds better than stock on this particular guitar. It's also loud.

The guitar itself is solid birch throughout (poplar neck and ebonized board, though) and does have some repaired hairline cracks along the grain in the top. The seams are all good, the bracing (ladder) is all tight, and overall it looks pretty nice finish-wise. It's definitely been kicking-around a bit, though. The new bridge is ebony and I fit some '50s-looking Gotoh tuners to the headstock because the originals are... frustrating... 

Last but not least, I installed a random old Barcus Berry acoustic pickup inside to allow this to fulfill "peculiar recording needs" if necessary. This was simply for fun.