Modifying a Harmony Sovereign 1260
Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2017 4:29 pm
Keith's rebuild project has inspired me to post some pictures of my latest debacle, modifying a Harmony Sovereign 1260 "Jumbo." It started out as a neck reset, but it's sort of gotten out of hand.
First, a brief history of the guitar. A friend of mine bought it in I think the spring of 1965, when we were both seniors in high school. It may have been the previous fall, but it doesn't matter. List price for the guitar was $85.00. My friend got it on sale for $69.00.
A few years later, after we graduated from college and got jobs and money, my friend lusted after a Martin D-18. He bought a D-18 and sold me the Harmony Sovereign, say around 1972. I've owned it ever since. It is now about 53 years old.
Like many guitars of that age, it needed a neck reset. I finally got up the courage to try that, and a few days ago I took the neck off, reasonably cleanly. I sanded down the mating faces on the heel to angle the neck back enough to get the action where it should be. A sane person would at that point have reinstalled the neck. I had Ideas.
For one thing, the neck had a certain essence of baseball bat about it. While I had the neck off, it was a perfect time to shave a bit off the back of the neck to thin it down to a better profile.
Shaving down the neck took the finish off where I shaved it, of course. I doubted very much if I could refinish just those areas and have them come anywhere close to blending in with the original finish...so I scraped the finish off the entire neck and will refinish the whole thing. A this point the question arose, 'Should I refinish the body too?" So far I've resisted that idea. The neck and body don't match, but from a hundred yards away it's not noticeable. In fact, it's better than that. They are close enough so they look quite good together. Guitar necks and bodies frequently look diffremt, anyway.
Then there were the stories and rumors I'd heard: "If you change the bracing form the factory ladder bracing to X bracing, it turns a Harmony Sovereign into a Martin killer!" Well, I have no need or desire to kill Martins, but my curiosity certainly wanted to find out if it was true. So I took the back off.
Doing so made it very obvious that Harmony guitars were mass-produced and built cheaply. The bracing is mostly rough-sawn and approximately the size of 2x4s. (Maybe not quite that big...) I shaved down the braces on the back to lighten them up. They're probably still too heavy, but it should help.
I took the ladder bracing and bridge plate off the top. I'm now in the process of gluing on X bracing. I couldn't find any specs for replacement X bracing in a Harmony Sovereign 1260, so I made it up, based on "typical;" X bracing in other guitars.
So that's the current state of it. Here are a couple of photos. More to come.
First, a brief history of the guitar. A friend of mine bought it in I think the spring of 1965, when we were both seniors in high school. It may have been the previous fall, but it doesn't matter. List price for the guitar was $85.00. My friend got it on sale for $69.00.
A few years later, after we graduated from college and got jobs and money, my friend lusted after a Martin D-18. He bought a D-18 and sold me the Harmony Sovereign, say around 1972. I've owned it ever since. It is now about 53 years old.
Like many guitars of that age, it needed a neck reset. I finally got up the courage to try that, and a few days ago I took the neck off, reasonably cleanly. I sanded down the mating faces on the heel to angle the neck back enough to get the action where it should be. A sane person would at that point have reinstalled the neck. I had Ideas.
For one thing, the neck had a certain essence of baseball bat about it. While I had the neck off, it was a perfect time to shave a bit off the back of the neck to thin it down to a better profile.
Shaving down the neck took the finish off where I shaved it, of course. I doubted very much if I could refinish just those areas and have them come anywhere close to blending in with the original finish...so I scraped the finish off the entire neck and will refinish the whole thing. A this point the question arose, 'Should I refinish the body too?" So far I've resisted that idea. The neck and body don't match, but from a hundred yards away it's not noticeable. In fact, it's better than that. They are close enough so they look quite good together. Guitar necks and bodies frequently look diffremt, anyway.
Then there were the stories and rumors I'd heard: "If you change the bracing form the factory ladder bracing to X bracing, it turns a Harmony Sovereign into a Martin killer!" Well, I have no need or desire to kill Martins, but my curiosity certainly wanted to find out if it was true. So I took the back off.
Doing so made it very obvious that Harmony guitars were mass-produced and built cheaply. The bracing is mostly rough-sawn and approximately the size of 2x4s. (Maybe not quite that big...) I shaved down the braces on the back to lighten them up. They're probably still too heavy, but it should help.
I took the ladder bracing and bridge plate off the top. I'm now in the process of gluing on X bracing. I couldn't find any specs for replacement X bracing in a Harmony Sovereign 1260, so I made it up, based on "typical;" X bracing in other guitars.
So that's the current state of it. Here are a couple of photos. More to come.