The issue with the middle position is because of the way the volume controls are wired. If you swap the in/out of the volume pots (ie the input goes in lug 2 and the output goes out lug 1, lug 3 is grounded) then the volumes should work independently and you won't have the issue of the signal going to ground when one of the volumes is off in the middle position.
Depends whether it was wired to be a potentiometer or a rheostat. That looks like they were meant to be rheostats. When wired as a potentiometer the signal is put across it, the two outer terminals, one being ground. The output signal is derived from the wiper (middle terminal) and the ground. It is a percentage of the original signal, depending where the wiper is. A rheostat does not go across the signal like that. It goes in the line of the signal lead adding resistance to that path, reducing it that way. The third terminal would not be connected to anything in that case, especially not the ground.
Now I wanna dig out my '65 Bobkat and see how that's wired - pot or rheostat. (It's got the silver foils.) I haven't played it in decades, and I haven't had the pickguard off since the 1980s. I love these Harmony videos. Edit: I just opened it up and found the tone pots have one tab open and connected to nothing, and the volume pots have the end tabs bent over to the body of the pot, but I can't see any solder there anywhere. My eyes aren't so good anymore though. There's no grounding wire to the tailpiece, and no hole drilled for one, so it's sure easy to open up! But of course it has always had a lot of hum and a muddy tone. The wiring is very neat and solid, still no crackling pots after all these years!
@@beenaplumber8379 My 64 Rocket (H59) was exactly the same when I pulled it from my grandmother's attic. Neck pickup perfectly fine, middle pickup was mysteriously absent and bridge pickup sounding like the strings are in a different room. I ended up replacing the pickups with a set pulled from, presumably, a 3 pickup bobkat as they were of the riveted variety. I wonder if it's just an issue with how the bridge pickups were being wound.
When you were describing the grounding situation on the last pot. I couldn't help but think about the movie Jaws. "This was no metal fatigue it was a shark attack! "
I puzzled over that lovely word for too long - even searching for "genihishlap" and various other potentially Teutonic, Nordic, and/or Nederlanderesque orthographies - figuring it was a word for "polishing" I didn't know. All to no avail. Then I saw your post, googled your spelling, and only one result came up: a pdf of a catalogue for Abrasive Compounds & Polishing Tools. So, dutifully, I did a document search, and the result (weirdly) kept coming up for "Polishing." Why that search worked, I don't know. But seeing it highlighted on my Adobe Acrobat - specifically the strange initial syllable, "Gnih" - finally blew the cobwebs from my mind. What was it William Blake wrote in his Proverbs of Hell? "The road to the palace of wisdom is long, and it's paved with a bunch of damned foolishness undertaken by a damned fool, and by the time the fool's got the road all nice and paved, he's too damned tired to go inside, so he just sits on the curb, marvels at the long road behind him, and lies down for a spot of rest."
The first electric I bought was a used 1965 Silvertone/Harmony Rocket in 1982 for ~$60. The neck was like a baseball bat, which I love because I have huge hands and fingers, but it only had 20 frets. It had a kinda muddy tone too, but it was mine, and I loved it!
Your comment about earthing the strings reminded me of when, as budding rockstars in 1965, my buddies and I had a band, of sorts. We had zero money so everything was borrowed or from junk shops. My amp was my dad’s Grundig tape recorder, connecting my single pickup Vox guitar to the microphone input. The other guitarist had a real amp, with. 10” speaker and valves and used to smell bad when it got hot. We knew nothing about earth loops or whatever, and one day when rehearsing the singer had his hand on the microphone and accidentally touched my hand. The shock I got (240volts) nearly knocked me over, and the singer was just the same. We carried on though.
On a Gibson if you have both pickups on and turn down the bridge, you also turn down the neck. They are not independent. On a Rickenbacker or Jazz bass turning down one doesn’t turn off both. It’s the way the volume pots are wired. On a Gibson the wiper goes to the output. So turning one pickup all the way turns down the output. On a Rick the wiper connects to the pickup. So you are only turning down the pickups, not the output. The bridge pickup probably has a break in the wire. You’ll still get sound due to capacitive coupling. But it’s thin and weak.
Parasitic capacitance was my first thought as well. An old 64 Mustang came in the shop with a wire broken and hanging out, but still showed resistance on the meter. Slight output, but, alas, really broken.
@@jeffscarff1655 not parasitic... the coil has a break in it. but each turn couples to the next one capacitively. Ío you still get a sound, but it's like it's passing though a capacitor, so all the low end is rolled off.
Switching the pickup locations so the weak Bridge pickup is then in the Neck location where the wider string oscillations produce a louder volume would probably balance the pickups better. But, with their outputs being so far apart, the results are hard to predict, and I've never used that type of pickup before. 🤷
I had a 1967 harmony base guitar. It had been stored in a dirt basement on concrete blocks. The guts were ripped out and just sitting on a dirt ledge. No matter what I did the action never dropped below a 1/4 inch, and unless I kept my finger on the pickup I would get a horrible buzz. Eventually I pulled off the humbuker pickup and replaced it with a modern one. And then I gave it to a friend who wanted to learn base. I still have the pickup, it's installed in a Walmart first act Strat knockoff I got when I was 16. Works great.
for some reason every time that you measure relief, I get that metallic taste in my mouth, cause in my childhood, the doctors used to use these steel spatulas to examine your throat. Of course they were disinfected after that. Those filler gauges just remind me so much of those spatulas, that I can't help but feel the taste
I recently repaired a '72 Harmony H27 bass, which had been used to trip and catch an inebriated dance partner. Same switch gear and pots, same coiled steel shielding and twisted control layout, but this one had a truss rod and both pickups worked. Mahogany finish was dark but intact, and the cellulose binding was amber, cracked and loose all over. I got lucky, all the wood was all there, so creative caul making and clamping brought the broken edges back into alignment. Plays really nicely again, still looks like a road worn relic, and the repairs are not obvious. I'd buy it, if the owner ever wanted to sell it 😊
Australian rocker Courtney Barnett occasionally plays a lefty red burst Rocket (although she usually plays a Tele). They do seem to be catching on as a kind-of budget vintage choice
I have a Harmony H59 Rocket, now fitted with a Bigsby tremolo. I think that the tremolo was retro fitted by a previous owner. I am not sure if Bigsby trems were fitted at the Harmony factory. The H59 is fitted with triple pickups, with 6 control knobs. It is very eye catching and has a lovely tone, even without the electrics being plugged in. I can recommend a great book on the subject of The Harmony company. The book is "Harmony, The People's Guitar". The author is Ron Rothman, and I can recommend it. Lots of great pictures and a history of the company. I think I bought my copy on Amazon.
Early Rolling Stones videos shows Keith Richards using a Harmony Rocket, also Spencer Davis Group, Steve Winwood's brother used an H22 bass for "I'm a Man" in the video. I have a 65 H22 bass, which is the same body.
Yep, Jaguars are 1megs and so are Telecaster Customs and Deluxes. That cunife wide range needs a 1 meg. I just built a Tele Custom and was worried it would be too bright with the 1 meg. I did a bunch of research and almost bought 500's but eventually just decided to do it stock and see how it turns out. I'm really glad I went with the 1 meg. It is bright but its nothing you can't trim off and it sounds great. Lindy Fralin will rewind your pickups for a good price. He did my 65 jaguar pickup and killed it.
You say "eh" about pickup winding, but there are some CNC winders out there that wouldn't be much trouble to set up. The "eh" part for me would be the endless loop of questions, requests, and "purism" from customers if they needed a new pickup. It would be a constant hunt for vintage "correct" pickup parts.
Seriously, do you REALLY want to spend days searching hard copy mfr's catalogs for "46 AWG solid copper enamel coated coil wire" only for the customer to say "Yeah, but the enamel is the wrong color!" 😂
I’ve done repairs on a red Holiday branded one of these, with the red finish and matching hardware specs. The super short scale on a narrow neck, hollow body and those pickups make for an incredible jazz box if you put 12s on it! Wish these, or even the short lived reissue, had been made available left handed. Love the look and feel of them.
Oh man I would have loved that Harmony when I was a lad. I had a Broadway of the same vintage with a D"Armond. Like playing a garden rake. Great video.
Good video. I bought a Kay (Buck Reeder) thin line, single pickup at an auction years ago for a few bucks. Cleaned up and adjusted, and plays well. Best I could date it via Google Images, 1957.
Observation about pot values: the parallel combination is what loads the pickups at high frequencies where it matters: 1M||250k is like having two 360k pots in terms of "trebliness". The all over the place readings with the meter would indicate some problem with the winding, but sometimes it just got demagnetized, and that's something you can get into with much less of an investment than winding!
I've seen that wiring scheme before - where the wiper of the volume control is connected to ground, and the pickup to the top-leg. It just loads the pickup signal with a variable R to ground. It is a bad scheme, but it does function. The sound gets dramatically darker as the volume is reduced. Bummer on the bridge p'up
Ted, yet another great video. Love that string trick on the cable jack! I'd love to see a behind the scenes on how to make one. All the best, Dan in Nepean, ON
Reason it basically mutes when both pick ups are selected is due to the combination of the pick ups in parallel making it the equivalent of one, really weak pick up. (11k+2.3k=1.9k).
That's kind of true, but due to the different positions of the two pickups they put out a slightly different signal, so it tends to 'add' rather than just subtract.
I love your posts and learn a lot! I have a Harmony H74 (literally a cross between a Gibson 335 and. Fender Thinline), with a Bigbsy Tremolo on it. I installed flat wound strings on it and it has a sweet sound, (acoustically and plugged in). Acoustically doesn’t sound like a $5 guitar. It is the guitar that is next to my bed; my go to guitar at home. Love the Bigbsy too!
Forgot to mention I fell into guitar repair because I’ve been playing in church since 1976, never played for money. So I always buy used guitars and learned to repair them for church use. I am gearing up to rewind pickups, (I don’t think anyone one does it here in Hawaii), for my dead pickups. I don’t want to do custom winds, because if the customer doesn’t like it and wants their money back.
Putting my electronics hat on, I imagine the missing ground lug and high pot values on the volume suggest using it as a simple variable resistor, rather than using the potential divider effect to control the volume.
There's so many dastardly ways to wire a two pickup harness, it's wild that the manufacturers have tried to send out examples of all variables there of!
would love to meet the '27' club, not those musicians who died tragically at that age but the bunch of weirdos who always dislike these videos as soon as they're released.
Well that would explain why having both pickups selected kills the output of both. You have a solid beam of metal named "Ted" and can say Polishing backwards. Never cease to amaze me ;)
Depending on what magnets were used in the pickup, they might have lost some of their magnetic characteristics over time. Sometimes it's possible to "recharge" them by running a permanent magnet over them (paying attention to polarity). Not a guaranteed fix, but free and easy to try.
When it's too rainy and cold outside for a good ol' game of Lawn Darts, and your mom has hidden away your chemistry set due to the noxious odors it emits while it is burning holes into her antique dining room table. My favorite 50s toy is the Atomic Science one that came with genuinely dangerous radioactive materials inside of it. My mom taught guitar, and my first guitar was a very decent Jap tenor ukulele, then a Gibson LGO, then a Gibson Melodymaker. Then I got a paper route and bought myself a Les Paul Standard and a Fender Vibrolux Reverb amp. I still have them all.
I almost had a 1956 Harmony Rocket when I was in college. I was a screamer and I could have picked it up for only $300 USD. Too bad I was in college and didn't have the money. One of my life's regrets.
Love these instruments! I have an old Bobcat. I forget if that’s Silvertone or Harmony. It’s been in storage for years. Now I’m inspired to break er back out. Love the vids bro!!
Do you know how the gold foils compare to the silver foils, tonewise? I have a 65 Bobkat with its stock silver foil pickups, and I've always thought they sounded muddy and uninteresting, with no edge. (That's why my 2nd electric was a Strat.) Every time Ted plays an old Harmony with Gold Foils (and I swear I heard him play one with silver foils) they sound very rich and full of lovely overtones.
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Whenever your videos come up, I get a smile on my face. A few minutes of sanity in this crazy world. Thanks!
Same here. Love watching him bring these beautiful instruments back to life.
SAME
Amen to that Matt.
I've been rocking with my Rocket since 1968
Hey look at that, it's my favorite part of the weekend again!
mine too! Time to watch the MASTER, at work!
The issue with the middle position is because of the way the volume controls are wired. If you swap the in/out of the volume pots (ie the input goes in lug 2 and the output goes out lug 1, lug 3 is grounded) then the volumes should work independently and you won't have the issue of the signal going to ground when one of the volumes is off in the middle position.
Depends whether it was wired to be a potentiometer or a rheostat. That looks like they were meant to be rheostats. When wired as a potentiometer the signal is put across it, the two outer terminals, one being ground. The output signal is derived from the wiper (middle terminal) and the ground. It is a percentage of the original signal, depending where the wiper is. A rheostat does not go across the signal like that. It goes in the line of the signal lead adding resistance to that path, reducing it that way. The third terminal would not be connected to anything in that case, especially not the ground.
Now I wanna dig out my '65 Bobkat and see how that's wired - pot or rheostat. (It's got the silver foils.) I haven't played it in decades, and I haven't had the pickguard off since the 1980s. I love these Harmony videos.
Edit:
I just opened it up and found the tone pots have one tab open and connected to nothing, and the volume pots have the end tabs bent over to the body of the pot, but I can't see any solder there anywhere. My eyes aren't so good anymore though. There's no grounding wire to the tailpiece, and no hole drilled for one, so it's sure easy to open up! But of course it has always had a lot of hum and a muddy tone. The wiring is very neat and solid, still no crackling pots after all these years!
@@beenaplumber8379 My 64 Rocket (H59) was exactly the same when I pulled it from my grandmother's attic. Neck pickup perfectly fine, middle pickup was mysteriously absent and bridge pickup sounding like the strings are in a different room. I ended up replacing the pickups with a set pulled from, presumably, a 3 pickup bobkat as they were of the riveted variety. I wonder if it's just an issue with how the bridge pickups were being wound.
You'd definitely want one of the legs grounded on a guitar volume pot - never be able to shut the amp up completely otherwise 😊
absolutely correct......
I got a red Harmony Rocket in1969 when I was 14. I kept it in great shape and my son has it now. 😊
The Anchorman reference killed me. Great work as always Ted your entire presentation style and dry wit makes me very happy.
👍 For the algorithm!
For the algorithm!
For the algorithm!
God bless her and all who sail on her
Ted’s call to arms “For the ALGORITHM!”
Hail to the algorithm!
Ted gets an Indian name...: "Works-in-Socks".. lol
My first guitar when I was 15 was a Harmony solid body with two gold foil pickups. It came with flat wound strings. Had a killer sound.
>flatwound strings
you mean it sounded like muddled horse shit, with virtually no mids or high end to speak of.
When you were describing the grounding situation on the last pot.
I couldn't help but think about the movie Jaws. "This was no metal fatigue it was a shark attack! "
That sex panther reference had me rolling 😂
Same!!
Classic 😂
That "neck warmer" gave me a great idea for my 12-string acoustic that I have had since 1965! It needs something like that...
Loved the Better Call Saul ending. "Sometimes the guitar wins".
Gnihsilop! Solid gold!
It takes skill to unpolish frets.
I puzzled over that lovely word for too long - even searching for "genihishlap" and various other potentially Teutonic, Nordic, and/or Nederlanderesque orthographies - figuring it was a word for "polishing" I didn't know. All to no avail. Then I saw your post, googled your spelling, and only one result came up: a pdf of a catalogue for Abrasive Compounds & Polishing Tools. So, dutifully, I did a document search, and the result (weirdly) kept coming up for "Polishing." Why that search worked, I don't know. But seeing it highlighted on my Adobe Acrobat - specifically the strange initial syllable, "Gnih" - finally blew the cobwebs from my mind. What was it William Blake wrote in his Proverbs of Hell? "The road to the palace of wisdom is long, and it's paved with a bunch of damned foolishness undertaken by a damned fool, and by the time the fool's got the road all nice and paved, he's too damned tired to go inside, so he just sits on the curb, marvels at the long road behind him, and lies down for a spot of rest."
It must be said three times. Just don't do that while looking in a mirror.
Love those old Harmony/Sears guitars, your videos on Sunday are a real treat, thanks Mr. Ted
The first electric I bought was a used 1965 Silvertone/Harmony Rocket in 1982 for ~$60. The neck was like a baseball bat, which I love because I have huge hands and fingers, but it only had 20 frets. It had a kinda muddy tone too, but it was mine, and I loved it!
Your comment about earthing the strings reminded me of when, as budding rockstars in 1965, my buddies and I had a band, of sorts. We had zero money so everything was borrowed or from junk shops. My amp was my dad’s Grundig tape recorder, connecting my single pickup Vox guitar to the microphone input. The other guitarist had a real amp, with. 10” speaker and valves and used to smell bad when it got hot. We knew nothing about earth loops or whatever, and one day when rehearsing the singer had his hand on the microphone and accidentally touched my hand. The shock I got (240volts) nearly knocked me over, and the singer was just the same. We carried on though.
On a Gibson if you have both pickups on and turn down the bridge, you also turn down the neck. They are not independent.
On a Rickenbacker or Jazz bass turning down one doesn’t turn off both. It’s the way the volume pots are wired.
On a Gibson the wiper goes to the output. So turning one pickup all the way turns down the output. On a Rick the wiper connects to the pickup. So you are only turning down the pickups, not the output.
The bridge pickup probably has a break in the wire. You’ll still get sound due to capacitive coupling. But it’s thin and weak.
Parasitic capacitance was my first thought as well. An old 64 Mustang came in the shop with a wire broken and hanging out, but still showed resistance on the meter. Slight output, but, alas, really broken.
@@jeffscarff1655 not parasitic... the coil has a break in it. but each turn couples to the next one capacitively. Ío you still get a sound, but it's like it's passing though a capacitor, so all the low end is rolled off.
Ironically, "Gnihsilop" was my nickname in high school.
Thanks for the flashback, old chum.
First high school band I saw in 62' "from the city" had these and I loved them ever since!!!
Switching the pickup locations so the weak Bridge pickup is then in the Neck location where the wider string oscillations produce a louder volume would probably balance the pickups better. But, with their outputs being so far apart, the results are hard to predict, and I've never used that type of pickup before. 🤷
I used to have a 62h...the crazy lady has it now. I miss it.
I knew something was wrong when those old pickups read 11k lol
I had a 1967 harmony base guitar. It had been stored in a dirt basement on concrete blocks. The guts were ripped out and just sitting on a dirt ledge. No matter what I did the action never dropped below a 1/4 inch, and unless I kept my finger on the pickup I would get a horrible buzz.
Eventually I pulled off the humbuker pickup and replaced it with a modern one. And then I gave it to a friend who wanted to learn base.
I still have the pickup, it's installed in a Walmart first act Strat knockoff I got when I was 16. Works great.
for some reason every time that you measure relief, I get that metallic taste in my mouth, cause in my childhood, the doctors used to use these steel spatulas to examine your throat. Of course they were disinfected after that. Those filler gauges just remind me so much of those spatulas, that I can't help but feel the taste
I recently repaired a '72 Harmony H27 bass, which had been used to trip and catch an inebriated dance partner. Same switch gear and pots, same coiled steel shielding and twisted control layout, but this one had a truss rod and both pickups worked. Mahogany finish was dark but intact, and the cellulose binding was amber, cracked and loose all over. I got lucky, all the wood was all there, so creative caul making and clamping brought the broken edges back into alignment. Plays really nicely again, still looks like a road worn relic, and the repairs are not obvious. I'd buy it, if the owner ever wanted to sell it 😊
"It's got chunks of real panther in it!"
Australian rocker Courtney Barnett occasionally plays a lefty red burst Rocket (although she usually plays a Tele). They do seem to be catching on as a kind-of budget vintage choice
Cool Harmony.👍
Well, there was a memory. Back in the mid-1960s I took lessons on a solid-body Harmony that had one of those pickups. Fun times.
I have a Harmony H59 Rocket, now fitted with a Bigsby tremolo. I think that the tremolo
was retro fitted by a previous owner. I am not sure if Bigsby trems were fitted at the
Harmony factory. The H59 is fitted with triple pickups, with 6 control knobs. It is very eye catching and has a lovely tone, even without the electrics being plugged in.
I can recommend a great book on the subject of The Harmony company.
The book is "Harmony, The People's Guitar". The author is Ron Rothman, and I can
recommend it. Lots of great pictures and a history of the company. I think I bought my
copy on Amazon.
Fender used the 1 meg pot for Jazzmasters and Jaguars from their debut and until CBS.
...as always, excellent!...
Early Rolling Stones videos shows Keith Richards using a Harmony Rocket, also Spencer Davis Group, Steve Winwood's brother used an H22 bass for "I'm a Man" in the video. I have a 65 H22 bass, which is the same body.
Thank you, Ted 😊
Nice harness construction Ted! 😎👍
Yep, Jaguars are 1megs and so are Telecaster Customs and Deluxes. That cunife wide range needs a 1 meg.
I just built a Tele Custom and was worried it would be too bright with the 1 meg. I did a bunch of research and almost bought 500's but eventually just decided to do it stock and see how it turns out. I'm really glad I went with the 1 meg. It is bright but its nothing you can't trim off and it sounds great.
Lindy Fralin will rewind your pickups for a good price. He did my 65 jaguar pickup and killed it.
Thanks, Ted. Your language skills are enivid.
Old school cool!
I have an H-54 in Redburst from1966! The pickups are magic!
You say "eh" about pickup winding, but there are some CNC winders out there that wouldn't be much trouble to set up. The "eh" part for me would be the endless loop of questions, requests, and "purism" from customers if they needed a new pickup. It would be a constant hunt for vintage "correct" pickup parts.
Seriously, do you REALLY want to spend days searching hard copy mfr's catalogs for "46 AWG solid copper enamel coated coil wire" only for the customer to say "Yeah, but the enamel is the wrong color!" 😂
I’ve done repairs on a red Holiday branded one of these, with the red finish and matching hardware specs. The super short scale on a narrow neck, hollow body and those pickups make for an incredible jazz box if you put 12s on it! Wish these, or even the short lived reissue, had been made available left handed. Love the look and feel of them.
Curtis Novak makes DeArmond S-Grille pickups, but I'm guessing Ted is well aware of that.
Oh man I would have loved that Harmony when I was a lad. I had a Broadway of the same vintage with a D"Armond. Like playing a garden rake. Great video.
Good video. I bought a Kay (Buck Reeder) thin line, single pickup at an auction years ago for a few bucks. Cleaned up and adjusted, and plays well. Best I could date it via Google Images, 1957.
Hahahahahha I literally just watched Ron burgundy this morning and that sex panther comment had me howling!!
@3:18 The Appropriately named "F Hole"🤬😁
I have a 1950'a Harmony waiting for some TLC.🥰
THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTENT!!. 👍
Mike in San Diego.🌞🎸🚀🖖
Fender also uses 1 meg vol and 500k tone for the vintage noiseless singles.
Golly Ted, those cupcake knobs sure are swell!
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever” - I mean WOW! soo deep, soo true - love it :)
Yes!! Made my day.
Great video as always love that you're doing all the work in white socks
Best way to enjoy a lazy Sunday.
Extra credit this week, for working in an anchorman reference!!Thanks Ted!
"Stings the nostrils, in a good way"
Would have been interesting to hear the pickups swapped over. Weaker one in the neck and neck in the bridge.
That neck pickup did sound lush 👍
Back to the salt mine... Ted said so....
Such a nice video, thanks😊
Socks and gnihsilop… together at last.
Great video as always.... but for those who feel it's just not complete as it stands... have this. POLISHING, POLISHING, POLISHING.
Observation about pot values: the parallel combination is what loads the pickups at high frequencies where it matters: 1M||250k is like having two 360k pots in terms of "trebliness".
The all over the place readings with the meter would indicate some problem with the winding, but sometimes it just got demagnetized, and that's something you can get into with much less of an investment than winding!
I've seen that wiring scheme before - where the wiper of the volume control is connected to ground, and the pickup to the top-leg. It just loads the pickup signal with a variable R to ground. It is a bad scheme, but it does function. The sound gets dramatically darker as the volume is reduced. Bummer on the bridge p'up
Ted, yet another great video. Love that string trick on the cable jack! I'd love to see a behind the scenes on how to make one. All the best, Dan in Nepean, ON
Reason it basically mutes when both pick ups are selected is due to the combination of the pick ups in parallel making it the equivalent of one, really weak pick up. (11k+2.3k=1.9k).
That's kind of true, but due to the different positions of the two pickups they put out a slightly different signal, so it tends to 'add' rather than just subtract.
Thanks for playing them for us Ted!
Dang. Not every day will be the best day. Love your craft.
I had the red one with the wammy bar! what a great ride
I love your posts and learn a lot! I have a Harmony H74 (literally a cross between a Gibson 335 and. Fender Thinline), with a Bigbsy Tremolo on it. I installed flat wound strings on it and it has a sweet sound, (acoustically and plugged in). Acoustically doesn’t sound like a $5 guitar. It is the guitar that is next to my bed; my go to guitar at home. Love the Bigbsy too!
Forgot to mention I fell into guitar repair because I’ve been playing in church since 1976, never played for money. So I always buy used guitars and learned to repair them for church use. I am gearing up to rewind pickups, (I don’t think anyone one does it here in Hawaii), for my dead pickups. I don’t want to do custom winds, because if the customer doesn’t like it and wants their money back.
Putting my electronics hat on, I imagine the missing ground lug and high pot values on the volume suggest using it as a simple variable resistor, rather than using the potential divider effect to control the volume.
There's so many dastardly ways to wire a two pickup harness, it's wild that the manufacturers have tried to send out examples of all variables there of!
I started with a Harmony Meteor when I was fourteen back in 1980, I quickly moved to a Fender however for obvious reasons.
would love to meet the '27' club, not those musicians who died tragically at that age but the bunch of weirdos who always dislike these videos as soon as they're released.
Well that would explain why having both pickups selected kills the output of both. You have a solid beam of metal named "Ted" and can say Polishing backwards. Never cease to amaze me ;)
I love having both volumes high and close to the right hand. Easier to adjust mid playing. You rarely need to adjust tone mid song
Unique tone
Through an old Champ I would bet real money it sounds like a freight train.
Very killer Guitar
Blues machine!
Wonderful Video. Richards played one with the Stones. Wyman played the Bass version.
Wyman played a Framus bass actually. Ronnie Laine of the Small Faces did play a Harmony bass as did Muff Winwood however.
@@ixis99 you are right of course
RC Cola was great. The 10oz glass bottle.
Depending on what magnets were used in the pickup, they might have lost some of their magnetic characteristics over time. Sometimes it's possible to "recharge" them by running a permanent magnet over them (paying attention to polarity). Not a guaranteed fix, but free and easy to try.
When it's too rainy and cold outside for a good ol' game of Lawn Darts, and your mom has hidden away your chemistry set due to the noxious odors it emits while it is burning holes into her antique dining room table. My favorite 50s toy is the Atomic Science one that came with genuinely dangerous radioactive materials inside of it. My mom taught guitar, and my first guitar was a very decent Jap tenor ukulele, then a Gibson LGO, then a Gibson Melodymaker. Then I got a paper route and bought myself a Les Paul Standard and a Fender Vibrolux Reverb amp. I still have them all.
Damnit Ted! hahaha I always enjoy your videos.
Nice. I got the steel reinforced neck with the vibrato. Red.
It looks more like a Meteor, I had a Rocket back in the 60’s it was a nasty little guitar.
I almost had a 1956 Harmony Rocket when I was in college. I was a screamer and I could have picked it up for only $300 USD. Too bad I was in college and didn't have the money. One of my life's regrets.
Love these instruments! I have an old Bobcat. I forget if that’s Silvertone or Harmony. It’s been in storage for years. Now I’m inspired to break er back out. Love the vids bro!!
nice to see ted finally caved into the safety geeks with his ppe safety foot wear choice. e.g. 12:06
Kevlar socks?
Dave's design neck heater! I miss Dave.
Dave is still there, why would you miss him?
Have a 65 holiday bobkat gold foil pickups essentially it's a 3/4 Les Paul junior size hell of a player it really plays easily.
Send me the dead pickup. I'll rewind it for you.
Polishing backwards is still polishing. Love the vids.
Thanks for another great video!
Damn i was hoping youd show how ya got that 3 way switch out of that guitar. Never easy to remove on a design like this thats for sure.
Sad that the pickup has gone microphonic. They’re so great when they’re functional. One of my favorite tones.
Absolutely!
Do you know how the gold foils compare to the silver foils, tonewise? I have a 65 Bobkat with its stock silver foil pickups, and I've always thought they sounded muddy and uninteresting, with no edge. (That's why my 2nd electric was a Strat.) Every time Ted plays an old Harmony with Gold Foils (and I swear I heard him play one with silver foils) they sound very rich and full of lovely overtones.
I have the same model, a single-pickup model. I'd be keen to learn more about the "neck warmer" as mine's neck has the same relief issue.
Hey, I liked RC Cola
You could market that bridge pickup as having period-correct transistor radio tone.
Edit: keep on gnihsilop.
I think Switchcraft made/makes a right angle version of that switch for that very type of application. They're not cheap tho, IIRC.
You should make Twoodfrd white socks merch....😁. Tks for the video.
What a coincidence, your neck heater is named Ted too!
So , will you send that pick up out to someone to have it repaired?
Or, does it just go back to the customer to decide??