joel fildes I’ve got a mate from Essex who is so rough around the edges, he will only say “no” with “shove it up your arse.” If he answers “no,” it’s actually cause for concern. Diamond of a bloke, though.
I guarantee you, if I had a blood pressure monitor on while watching your videos, it'd drop right down. The calming effect of these videos makes them almost medicinal.
That's old school vinyl tubing around the wires. Used A LOT on older pre-transistor radios. Love watching these, as I work on old radios and tv as a hobby. This is like seeing another side of a coin
Tesco Del Ray... 1967 3 pickups, neck like a piano leg, power blue, feedback and hum in all modes and volumes... Cost me 39.95 at Thrifty Drug Store. That was a LOT of mowed lawns. I wish I had it to play around with today.
Greetings from Scotland. I've watched all your videos and I'm in awe of your skills sir! My mate is one of Scotland's top luthiers, I've said to him that he should film one of his builds but he said he couldn't because he swears too much hahaha! He has now been tagged "The Tourette's Luthier". Keep the videos coming sir, they're magic!
You should try to convince him more. I’d love to see a Scottish luthier on the RU-vid scene, especially since I can’t find any in moray and if I need a luthier at some point I could always hit him up.
Just a note you might be interested in: I had a similar 4 knob, black, Silvertone brand Stratotone from about the same era and it had a white plastic end pin. As a result, I wasn’t surprised that you found a wider hole than you expected and the hidden remains of a white plastic end pin, since I suspect the metal end pin was a retrofit. My Dad bought me that guitar in the 1963-1964 time frame.
That’s exactly what’s going on. I have a Stratotone with a broken white plastic end pin. I have a replacement, but plan to just screw in a modern one for now. When it breaks, I will then install the broken end pin with the old stock replacement. Plastic for a strap pin wasn’t a brilliant idea.
I've got a 65 Silvertone Bobkat (solid-body, made by Harmony), and it had a white plastic strap button on the bottom and a chrome-plated one up by the neck. I thought maybe the upper button had been replaced. I've since replaced both of them. I've always loved that guitar.
Another nice video as usual. I would certainly test those resistors. They are for summing the signals so the vol pots work more independently. It was common back then before they realised you could wire the pots backwards. The early Fender jazz basses had similar resistors. They will dull the tone and reduce the output significantly. And after 65 years, the old carbon composite resistors will break down and often have more resistance than originally. In valve amps they are particularly problematic. The other thing that may be causing the weak output from the neck pickup is the magnet. There's every chance it could simply need recharging with a couple of neos. Cheers!
Hi Rob nice to see you here as I'm a fan of your channel as well. I was wondering what you meant by "wire the pots backwards" if you can elaborate thanks
Years ago I sold my harmony hollow body bass. I am 69 years old and still kicking myself over that, not for the ridiculous price they bring, but because it was so much fun to play. You did great work on this guitar.
I was one of those kids who watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, but I ended up playing drums. My first kit was a 1960 5 piece Ludwig with Zildjian cymbals. I learned guitar starting in 1971 with and ended up a '57 Telecaster that an ex friend smashed into 1000 pieces while he was tripping.
You're funny ! You make videos like this and you wonder why people are going to send you their guitars... no matter the cost ! You have the love in your work and it is easy to see !!! Just awesome content !
I never understood the principle behind the Zen sound of one hand clapping until I started watching these amazing uploads - the combination of calm voice, gentle handling of old instruments and almost infinite skill has an incredibly calming effect. This 'Strat is clearly a chepo by today's standards (although all those pots etc. were far better than I was expecting), but the love shown by both owner and Ted is all that matters in the time and care spent making the repair. Mesmeric . . . not to mention educational.
"It's like poking the Rottweiler...I don't really want that hassle." - TedSpeak perfection, that. My favorite luthier, and Guitar Repairman/Surgical Genius, does it again. This ol' Strat-O-Tone comes back to life, and blasts off for regions unknown...but just, "put it over to the bridge...leave it like that, forever...this is where the magic is." And we all "believe in magic", right?
Mr. T...so love your video's...I started playing in 1965....learning and loving it more than ever...I started working on guitars about 15 years ago....first thing I seem to do with a 'new' old clunker is just taking it apart....get it naked and see where we are going together...You have a voice for radio...I could listen to you...late night coming across the airwaves....thanks so much...billy b. from Western North Carolina.
That piece of white plastic where the strap button was is actually a remnant of the original strap button. The Harmony H-22 basses were the same way. The button by the bridge was white plastic, and the one on the upper bout by the neck was black. I've never seen another set of strap buttons like them. Unique to Harmony! I am not sure how they were held in, but it wasn't with a screw.
That was exactly what I was thinking it was either the resistor or the tone pot capacitor. The other thing you could do is probably try to reverse the polarity on the pickup... but I would certainly try what you're talkin about first. It sounds good enough that I think I have to disagree if it was my guitar I would definitely spend all day trying to figure it out🤣🤣🤣
On using compressed air: „I‘d not be able to see it, but I‘d know it‘s there.“ This sentence perfectly explains the difference between ok-ish worksmanship and yours. I find it is also taking care of small details like these that sets good apart from excellent. Greetings from one of your viewers in Europe :)
Valens, Wolf, Woodford... Came for the hot lick, stayed for the repair hops... magic fingers thru-out Still waiting for the music vid to drop. You selling... Ima buyin
Some of these harmony guitars had tapered plastic strap pins, glued or held by friction. I've got a 59 Stratotone Jupiter H49 with DeArmond gold foil pups. Very sweet. Not sure what those resistors were doing on the pup switch, but changing the value might help that low output bridge pup. Love your videos you might have some of the sharpest chisels on the planet!!
I have the single pickup version of this guitar, bought in a junk furniture store for $65 in the 90s. I souped it up with new pickups and tuners and cut a new pick guard. I was surprised to find that they're now selling for as much as $1500 in the original condition! I did have fun working on it though, so... Thanks for the video. It was nice seeing an old Harmony. I wish instructional videos like this had been available back in the day.
The tubing of various sizes used for insulation in the old days was generically known as "spaghetti". I'm not sure of the material used for that thicker piece, possibly a vinyl, but it was originally crystal clear. That stuff has a habit of breaking down and can become exceedingly sticky and gummy, though I've rarely if ever seen it break. A final decay stage is to dry up and crystallize, and it will crumble into dust. That doesn't happen too often, but it does. Spaghetti also came in black and other colors. Spaghetti was also was made as a woven cloth tube impregnated with some form of plastic. I've never seen that stuff break down, but it usually becomes rock hard with age. There was no such thing as "shrink tube" in those days, but the woven stuff could be compressed lengthwise to expand it slightly and then pulled back to the original shape, so you could use a "too small" piece and press it over a resistor body or the like, and then it would hug the contents when it returned to its normal length. The vinyl stuff also stretched a little, so could be pulled over the end of a connector or the like. We are talking about maybe 10% expansion here, not the 100% or more we are used to with shrink tube. When you mentioned tacking the wire to the pot lead to hold it in place, I was reminded that the "proper" way to solder wires, taught back in the day, was that you made a good mechanical joint first, and then you soldered. The mechanical joint, in this case wrapping the end of the wire through the terminal lug and then pinching it with pliers, was intended to provide all of the mechanical vibration and pull resistance, and also make good electrical contact. The solder was just there to hold things in place and keep the contact points from oxidizing.
The fabric style of "spaghetti" tubing is sometimes known as "Cambric" tubing. The older style, seen used as insulation on vintage transformers and amplifiers, seems to be a woven phenolic materia, and is often varnish-coated and gets brittle with age; the newer style is more like woven fiberglass, extremely resistant to heat, and sometimes with a rubbery silicone outer coating. Very usefull stuff!
@The Shape Well, clearly for you it was a waste. For someone that might have to work on this stuff, or who might actually care about how this stuff was built originally, maybe it wasn't a complete waste.
My second guitar was a Harmony Stratotone Jupiter H49 with a Bigsby and I still dream about it 50 years after I sold it. I was told they were produced in Chicago by Harmony as student guitars and the pickups were gold foil Dimarzio’s unlike the ones in this video. I loved the tone and playability of it.
I still have a 63 Harmony Rocket with a singe gold foil Dimarzio. I bought is in 1989 at a pawn shop for $100. Been with me ever since and I love that guitar.
I really like looking at these old Harmonies, they're a little piece of lesser-known guitar history that has been mostly eclipsed by Fender and Gibson. It's really quite interesting to see what the competition was doing at the time.
This is my favorite guitar ever. Bought a 1959 one in 2017 and gigged with it since then, threw away all my other guitars. Lightweight, comfortable and those DeArmond p.u. are brutal.
just stumbled on your channel, and im glad i did. ive probably watched 10+ videos the past 2 days. you do great work and have a good attention to detail. more people should learn from your ways. keep up the good work
When I watch your videos, I feel entertained and enlightened. You explain both your actions, and the rationale behind them, beautifully. It doesn't hurt that your vocal tone is relaxing. Keep up the great work supporting music and musicians!
Brings back memories. My first electric guitar was a Harmony by Heath double cutaway hollow body kit guitar. I couldn't afford a cool Gibson double cutaway and my dad was a big Heathkit radio builder so he got me the Harmony. After moving to acoustic it sat in the closet for years until I finally sold it to a guy in NYC, who loved it. I think it cost $250 in the late 60s and I sold it for three ties that much, though I've been told I could have gotten more.
Another great video. You do excellent repair work, give thoughtful explanations of what you're doing and why, are forthright but, most of all, really enjoy your sense of humor. Wish you were my neighbor.
FYI, those are DeArmond pickups. DeArmond built the pickguard assemblies in-house and shipped them to Harmony. Anything made by DeArmond in the '50s and '60s was of the best quality.
Thanks for another great video Ted. I feel as though we may have met in the past. I was a regular customer at the Lee Valley store in London, not sure if you ever worked at that store. ...... Again, Thanks!
Thank you for all your great vids. It is very interesting, instructing. Philosophically, it is great to see someone who’s business is to fix and add value to old or broken instruments.
I put a electric sitar bridge on a single pickup one of these with a Bill Lawrence PU in the neck position and some blade single coil Who Knows What installed by the bridge. It is so very cool. I have a couple more carcasses in the workshop to do something with one day.
About 20 years ago I had a chance to buy a pre-62. It sounded amazing, was in pretty shape.....and was dirt cheap I wanna say around $300. This was back when vintage market really hadn't paid any attention to most guitars NOT built by Gibson or Fender (except for the 70's era...those things were going for less than a brand new Mexican Fender). Couple weeks later, i changed my mind...remembering early Stones albums had Brian Jones playing one of these....and of course it was gone. I'm still kicking myself for not buying that one...& a boat load of $400 70's 3-bolt Strats. Enjoyed the video!
I've installed two-way mandolin t-rods in 2 H-49 Jupiters. Both had broken rods so I removed the fret boards and lengthened the channels to accommodate the new rods. They came out great.
Kudos on another solid repair! I love old funky guitars like this. I have an old Silvertone Bobkat (you can see it on my channel) and this guitar's vibe really reminds me of it. Those old single coils can be really cool and a very unique sound.
The white plastic inside where the strap button goes is possibly what's left of the original broken off plastic strap button. I have an old Harmony with a white plastic strap button.
That guitar sounds awesome.. the bridge pup kicks ass... it indeed is where the magic lives.. vintage blues and rockabilly tone in spades.. that would make a killer slide fiddle as well... you do awesome work!
Nice to see people other than me using a good ol' Harbor Freight straps to work on a guitar body :) Also, you've inspired me to work on my single pickup basket case version of this, and also a black double pickup version. Sigh, time to start saving those nickels and dimes for parts. LOTS of nickels and dimes lol
That's some pretty good pickin and grinning there, I am impressed. You are a pretty good guitarist , having a bit of skill in all different kinds of play. Your creative crack repair looked really good. I was surprised that the guitar didn't sound like what I expected from a hollow body, but I guess 60(?) year old electric devices are going to have a different experience than what you expect! Still it has an amazing and interesting sound, even now, how many decades later. Anyway great job.
There are a lot of features of this guitar that remind me of my '65 Silvertone. I know Silvertone was made by a bunch of different manufacturers over the years, and I wonder if mine was made by Harmony? Those three screws for the bolt-on nexk look like I could swap my neck in as a direct replacement. I've never seen that setup anywhere but my Silvertone. Wow - it even has that muddy tone! When I play solo stuff above the 12th fret, it has no edge at all. The volume drops off. But it's beefy for rhythm. It's got those thin, riveted-on pickups, though a different design, and pretty noisy too, like this one. It's kind of exciting? My guitar's past has always been a mystery to me! (Edit) Woot! I just learned mine is a 1965 Silvertone Bobkat made by Harmony! It looks like they're going for about $500-$600 or so nowadays, not that I'd trade it. Harmony also sold the Bobkat under their own brand, but they had different knobs and different colors - the Silvertone was black only. Mystery solved! 🙂 (Sometimes I forget how useful the Internet can be. I feel so old...)
