Repair And Restoration
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1961 Harmony Rocket H54 with bowed neck
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1961 Harmony Rocket H54 with bowed neck
So I’ve ended up with a 1961 Harmony H54 for free. The neck has about .022″ of relief without strings on it. The fretboard was taken off long ago. I got it like that, it was just stuck on with double sided tape. I have no clue why it was taken off other than maybe someone wanted to fix the excessive relief and changed their mind. It looks like the original steel reinforcement rod was never actually glued in. It seems like it was bent and only meant to hold in with the pressure of the bend.
I’m not sure what to do next with it. I think that properly gluing in a reinforcement rod and gluing the fretboard back on would maybe be sufficient to put the neck straight but since the fretboard is already off and it’s a bolt-on neck I’m kind of thinking about putting a truss rod in it. The only things left original on the guitar are the tuners and the tailpiece so at this point I’m not too worried about originality. It would have to be a heel adjustable truss rod since I don’t really want to get rid of the cool “Steel reinforced neck” script thing on the headstock.
Would I be shooting myself in the foot with that idea? I feel like it would make the guitar a bit more playable but maybe there’s something I haven’t thought of and it’s a completely stupid idea. I don’t deal with vintage guitars often, I have the tooling and ability but I lack the encyclopedic knowledge that people who do this regularly all seem to have.
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9 Replies
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If you wish to save it then yes, replace that steel bar with a truss rod or carbon fiber and straighten it out before you reglue the board.
Are the original pickups still with the guitar?
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No, the original pickups are long gone. The guy I got it from actually bought repro covers and wanted me to wind my own version of them but then I found the whole neck thing, and he lost interest. He moved and he told me to keep it.
I kind of want to save it. I don’t care about the value, and I think it’d be a shame to just throw away something that could be made to work again.
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I have a Harmony Bobcat that came into my possession due to a similar story.
It came to me with the board off of it and the finish stripped. I did the work to reglue the board and did a job I was truly proud of with the finish. The burst would pass for the original to my first, second and third glances but after I got the neck back on and strung it up I discovered the pickups were dead. The owner was a huge dando about it throwing a hissy fit at me over the phone. This thing came to me in pieces and nothing was mentioned re: the electronics but still I kinda blamed myself for not investigating before diving in. Anyways … that guy apologized to me later but he still abandoned the guitar and it’s mine now. Been in it’s unfinished state since that disheartening sequence of events.
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Yeah, those Rowe pickups are known to fail. They’re not a great design. They look cool though.
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What planet are these guys from? Anyway, the Bobcat has a special place in my heart. My childhood best friend played one in our very first band. I watched him grow into an excellent musician with that instrument as his foundation. He’s the guy all the way on the right. The nerd bait on the left is me on bass. This is photographic evidence of my first paid gig. I think we each made $2.00.
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Thanks for sharing, cool picture. I have a soft spot for “catalog” guitars.
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Me too. I used to lust over the guitars in the Sears catalog. In my photo, the guy in the middle in playing a Xenon. My bass was made by Tempo. Wonderful days.
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Dug it out of storage. I love old catalog guitars but I’ve worked on a lot for people for what amounts to no pay for myself or this one for example where I put I’d say $600 into it to have it abandoned and sit with me for years. I do like it so it’s a small consolation. Put another $400-500 into it and it’ll be sweet!
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Also, at the time I believe I quoted that job at $200-250 which is disgusting. I don’t do that anymore and I recommend nobody else do it either. That’s how you end up with entitled a-holes hitting you up for stuff
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