1940s Harmony H1308 Cremona Carved-Top Archtop Guitar

This was the fanciest archtop available from Harmony at the time and features a fully-carved spruce top over carved maple back. It has lots of fancy trim -- multi-ply binding with tortoise featured predominantly, pearl block inlay in the board, a "racing stripe" down the middle of the board, super-hip headstock inlay, and bound f-holes. A big "carved top" stamp is seen through said f-holes. The tuners, bridge, tailpiece, and pickguard all appear to be later and unoriginal but they do look at home on it.

Tonewise it's punchy, direct, and loud and lives up to the hype. It reminds me a lot of the sound of Martin C-series archtops.

I had to do a ton of work on this one. The neck needed to be reset but I found a completely destroyed/detached/split-in-various-ways neckblock after I got it off with various old attempts at repairs. It also had a pretty wonky refret job which had to be ameliorated a bit. There were various cracks to address in the top and other seam repairs needing work, too, and the endblock had also sustained some damage. I shored the whole instrument up with a 1/2" dowel that runs from neckblock and endblock (and is pinned in place) to add some strength for the compromised areas, reset the neck, did a level/dress of the frets, made a new top for the bridge (it had an electric top on it before), fixed all the rest, and then set it up. 

It's wearing a set of 50w-11 flatwounds for a swing-style sound and feel. I would not trust this neck beyond that tension as it's had a history of warping, it seems. It's now playing nicely and it looks like a million bucks, too, with its super-fancy headstock treatment on front and back and the impressively-figured maple used throughout the back and sides -- all solid, too.