1970s Harmony H1264 Jet Set Sovereign Jumbo Guitar

The last time I worked on a Jet Set jumbo was a while back. This one was bought by my customer to supposedly resell, but he had me work on a few of his instruments and wound-up choosing this one out of the batch of them to take home instead.

These are basically the same as the venerable H1265 model with the exception of different finish, different pickguards, and birch back and sides rather than mahogany. This gives them a sound almost the same as an H1265 (like an H1260 but mellower and warmer, more like a Gibson J-50) but with a little more directness and punch to the sound and a little more chunk to the lows rather than the sort-of airier/hollow warmth of the mahogany versions. It's a really good sound if you play cluttered-up music and want all the notes to be heard.

At any rate, some work had been done to this in the past (including a rather obnoxious bridge shave) but my work this time was to give it a neck reset, fret level/dress, saddle-slot fill/recut and new bone saddle, and setup. It's playing spot-on, now, and looking spiffy.

Considering the owner's tastes for gear-swapping, I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see this come back here for sale again, but for now it's having a good time playing open-tuned whatnot down in Mass.




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