Guitar Collector Forum

I'm not a luthier or guitar tech, actually I'm an impatient novice who as a kid had fingerprints all over painted model cars. It seems I'm almost drawn to wet paint, to reach out and touch it just to see how wet it is. Therefore I seldom take on projects like this Harmony but what the heck hey.
I got a great deal on this guitar. It was stripped of most of it’s original hardware and the neck was loose and bowed quite badly. The finish wasn’t all that bad but since I’m not a fan of the top/bottom sunburst that Harmony used on these guitars and the fact that there was very little left original on the guitar, I thought I’d sand her down and see what was under the paint.
Since there’s no adjustable truss rod I clamped the neck straight and laid it over a pot of boiling water until I got it back to straight.
Then I stripped and sanded it to reveal a beautiful grain. Sanding the fingerboard removed the painted on block inlays and brought out an awesome grain pattern. I purchased block inlay stickers from jockomo81 on ebay and clear coated/sanded until smooth.
Of course the painted on binding disappeared when I sanded the guitar and routing it for proper binding wasn’t in the budget so I purchased some white vinyl pin stripe tape which after clear coat blended in nicely.
I stained it with Minwax early American and top coated it with Zinsser shellac. After wet sanding I used turtle wax white polishing compound the really shine her up.
I installed a couple of P90s that required a little routing. I found a re-production Harmony Hollywood pickguard and modified it slightly for the pickups.
After standing back and looking I decided that gold hardware was the only way to go.
After a year the neck bow is only minor and the action is nice and low. This guitar plays really nice although I find vintage Harmony necks a little too much lumber for me. The sound is awesome unplugged and really bluezy through an amp. I think it looks really classy.

Here's some more pictures

Thanks for looking

After a year the neck bow is only minor and the action is nice and low. This guitar plays really nice although I find vintage Harmony necks a little too much lumber for me. The sound is awesome unplugged and really bluezy through an amp. I think it looks really classy.