1969 Harmony H169 Buck Owens 000-Size Guitar

Overview: The date stamp on this fella is almost illegible but appears to read S69 for 1969. Clearly, it's been ridden hard all its life as it has playwear up the wazoo in the form of genuine abuse (cracks in the back) and neglect (missing headstock veneer, one missing tuner when it arrived, a long-gone pickguard) and then general roughhousing (discoloration of the finish, scratches, and whatnot). This model is a pretty iconic piece of Americana despite its fairly low-brow trappings. It's a ladder-braced, spruce over birch instrument that is related to the Harmony H1203 Sovereign model and H164 Jet Set model -- it's the same design as an H164 but with different looks.

Tone: It's woody, punchy, and mids-focused with a folksy, mellower sound than normal for this model. I'm granting that to the miles and miles and miles it's obviously traveled!

Feel: It's got a pretty typical Harmony Sovereign sort-of feel -- a 1 3/4" nut width mated to a medium-C/D shaped neck with a tighter, 10" board radius. It's vaguely Gibson-like (if we're talking late '40s) including the low/medium-width fret feel.

Interesting features: Well, clearly, it's got the killer paintjob, right?

Repairs included: I gave it a neck reset and coaxed some truly poor back crack repairs back into more of a "flush" position than the 1/8" displacement they were at before (oh-my-gods). Ancel then took over and replaced a missing back brace with a "strapping-style" flat brace, reglued several others where they needed it, leveled and dressed the frets, and fit a new oversize rosewood (compensated) saddle in place of the missing original adjustable unit, and set it up. It's playing spot-on and ready to serve.

• Weight: 3 lbs 13 oz
• Scale length: 25 1/8"
• Nut width: 1 3/4"
• Neck shape: medium C/D
• Board radius: 10"
• Body width: 15 1/8"
• Body depth: 3 7/8"
• Top wood: solid spruce
• Back & sides wood: solid birch
• Bracing type: ladder
• Bridge: rosewood
• Fretboard: rosewood
• Neck wood: poplar, likely
• Action height at 12th fret: 3/32” bass 1/16” treble (fast, spot-on)
• String gauges: 52w, 40w, 30w, 22w, 16, 12
• Truss rod: adjustable
• Neck relief: straight
• Fret style: medium-lower

Condition notes: We decided to leave the missing headstock veneer and pickguard as-is, though I would be happy to fit a repro pickguard if desired. The headstock veneer is a trickier matter but it would be easy-enough to paint it, stain it, or fit a matching tortoise-style sheet to it to match a pickguard. Frankly, though, I sort-of like it the way it is right now -- rough and ready.

There are a lot of cosmetic concerns to think about, however -- for example, the headstock veneer and pickguard are missing, as noted. The back has one long crack and one shorter one, both of which were "repaired" and are now re-repaired. They're not pretty but they're stable. The original saddle is missing and there's a rosewood one in there with full compensation to replace it. One tuner is actually a replacement from our parts-bin as one original was missing. Fortunately, I have a pretty deep parts-bin so Ancel was able to piece-together parts from a few of the same style tuner to make a replacement. Yip! The heel cap shows some damage from an old strap button that was replaced there but I've tidied it up as best as I could. There's weather-checking and yellowing to the finish everywhere. The finish on the treble side of the guitar is almost entirely chipped/flaked-off. It's a thing and you'll either find it cool (like we do) or gross. There's a replacement back brace way down where you can't see it.

Finally, when I reset the neck, I also added two reinforcement bolts hidden at the neckblock. They're pictured. This is because while the dovetail joint shimmed-up to nice and tight before regluing, it had some damage in the past (and Harmony joints are pretty bad to begin with) and I wanted it to be sure that it would remain secure.

It comes with: Unfortunately, I don't have an official case for it. I may have something in my storage area to put it in for shipping/storage, however.

Consignor tag: SKW