Clearly there were always pockets of admirers of these instruments out there and the 'net is dotted with sites that attempt to catalog information and models. The growing success of the Eastwood company producing relatively inexpensive reissues, and players like Jack White commanding increasing influence in the present, however, has very quickly increased the amount of attention placed on the formerly downtrodden. The aforementioned escalating vintage market has also left others besides myself scouring different pastures for what is affordable and available from the dawn of the rock 'n' roll era. Which brings us to the inspiration for today's post, a comment I read in this month's "Premier Guitar", in a review of a guitar from Montreal-based builder Nic Delisle. This guitar, Mr. Delisle's "The Forty-Four" model, is in essence a copy of the Harmony H44... with a base price of $1900!!
"It wasn’t long ago that Harmony guitars of the ’50s and ’60s were considered ill-suited to serious music making. But such guitarists as the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach and Marc Ribot have made amazing, signature sounds on these (once) affordable axes. And in their wake, players, collectors, and even guitar makers have reexamined the merits of these guitars while driving prices on the vintage market ever higher."
Nice to have been ahead of the "value" curve, and I suppose I should send Dan and Marc a quick note of thanks for driving those prices up. Meanwhile, take a look at the "real thing", a Harmony-built Silvertone S1429, stamped "F-61" inside, meaning build date fall of 1961, five years before I was born. Backstory: if I recall correctly I was looking for a Meteor, and through intense net searching landed on this piece in Lemoyne, PA store BCR Music. The 1429 was essentially a blinged-out Meteor, built by Harmony for Sears, with fabulous 6-ply body binding (!!!!), 3-ply on the neck, 3 DeArmond pickups with individual switches and 6 tiny fragile nonstandard good-freakin-luck-ever-replacing vol/tone knobs. I paid too much at the time, but it was one of those crazy "under the bed for 40 years" stories, and I rationalized that I may as well have one of the nicest ones in existence. One of the quirky things about it is the neck, which on 99.99% of guitars tapers to be wider at the body end than at the nut. On this guitar the taper is minimal, giving you the feeling like you're playing a giant bi-sected pencil strung with wire. The non-height adjustable pickups sit housed in fabulous solid rosewood surrounds and I tend to clunk my pick against the middle one, which I hate, and was one of the things that turned me against my hog-backed Gibson ES-175. The Silvertone tends to be the least played guitar in my "aggregate", and since I'm not a "collector" and have an internal barometer that compels me to get rid of guitars I don't play, I haul it out regularly determined to sell, plug it in... and hesitate. I mean, it sounds unreasonably good - amazing, really. The DeArmonds have the reputation of being some of the best guitar pickups ever made, and I have to say while my experience is limited (see above, re. "out of reach" vintage guitars) they are like nothing else. Big, airy, and crazy high output for the time - like one of the best single coils ever but with the added dimension of the fully hollow body. Feedback prone like all hollow bodies, but not overly so. Sigh. I may still succumb to the lure of some other high-value item I would play more (just saw a Guild X-170 in my local area!!), but for the moment the coolness factor prevails. Speaking of coolness, I did a quick search on "Fall of 1961" and landed on a terrific poem by Robert Lowell, called "Fall 1961" - this is an excerpt, but Google it for the rest and its resonance of the tone of the time,
All autumn, the chafe and jar
of nuclear war;
we have talked our extinction to death.
I swim like a minnow
behind my studio window.
Our end drifts nearer,
the moon lifts,
radiant with terror.
The state
is a diver under a glass bell.
A father’s no shield
for his child.
We are like a lot of wild
spiders crying together,
but without tears.
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