1930s Supertone (Harmony) Round-Hole 00-Size Archtop Guitar

My buddy Michael sent this in so I could get it ready for him to (potentially) take it home for use as an open-tuned slide guitar. I've lost count of how many of this model I've serviced -- I have two on the blog, this one and this one from 10+ years ago -- but they're always "interesting" cases. This particular one had lots of loose seams, a need for a neck reset and fretwork, and other generic fussiness needing to be done.

Post-repairs, I set it up to play spot-on (as seen in the pics) in case he wasn't interested in the sound. After he decided to take it home (well, at least for a while), I set-about modifying the bridge to be an adjustable unit and set the action at the nut a little higher. This allowed it to become the slide machine he was envisioning.

I wish I'd snagged a video, but suffice to say that the tone is sort-of open, airy, dry, and slightly woody in sound. It's got good snap and bark but almost all of its voice is concerned with hyped mids. It does sound killer with a slide!