Dave’s Harmony H82G Rebel

This is special restoration project for a friend of mine to reunite this guitar with it’s original owner (you can see his posting below with the whole story of the guitar, Thanks Dave!). It’s going to have a fair amount of mods to make it more playable and an original themed avocado burst paint job to bring some of the original flavor back.

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I started by removing all the original hardware and packing it up just in case Dave ever decides to return it to stock. Then I stripped off the layers of varnish and sanded everything smooth.

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The list of mods include:

– Seymour Duncan Antiquity P-90 pick ups

– Bigsby B-11 Trem

– Bigsby Sorkin Bowtie / Gretsch Space Control hybrid bridge

– Gotoh Locking Vintage Oval Knob 6-In-Line Tuners

– A new stainless steel truss rod

– parchment pearloid 3 ply pick guard and truss cover

– CTS rotary pots w/ NOS .033mf tone caps and a 3 position rotary switch

– Vintage black Dakaware bakelight knobs

– Nitrocellulose avocado burst paint

The top was in pretty rough shape and the original trem had torn all the screws out. I am installing a Bigsby B-11 and the original hole for the trem spring was right in the “window” of the Bigsby

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I reinforced the underside with a piece of 1/8″ thick maple to give myself some backing and a 1″ dia x 1/8″ thick round plug was cut to fill the hole for the original trem.

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After the holes were filled I enlarged the pick up hole larger to accommodate the Seymour Duncan Antiquity P-90’s we selected for this guitar.

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I filled in all the holes and covered the entire top with a thin layer of fiberglass resin. This will make the top stronger and perfectly smooth for paint.

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The original “stick shifter” sliding pots were is kind of rough shape and the bridge volume pot is DOA so I made a new pick guard out of parchment pearloid 3 ply material in a shape that better followed the contours of the body and I’ll install a 3 way rotary switch and 250K CTS rotary pots

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I Finished the pickguard, beveled the edges, created the wiring harness and mounted everything in the pickguard. It’s ready to drop in.

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The body and neck are completely smoothed, I am in the process of sourcing the paint. Once I figure out the direction i’ll go it’s ready for primer and paint.

I shot it with a few coats of a green tinted primer today. The bodywork looks pretty good and you cant even tell where the holes have been filled in. This is just a primer/base coat to help with the final color. I should start with the top coats in the next day or so.

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Check back for more…

3 thoughts on “Dave’s Harmony H82G Rebel”

  1. Hey Frank. It’s already starting to make me drool, just looking at the preliminary pics. A little background in case anyone is interested…

    I got the guitar back in the late 60’s. It was beautiful. Original finish was the avocado sunburst. I still remember the feeling I had when my dad took me over to Biasco to buy it. That first guitar. Beautiful. I thought that anything was possible.

    A couple years later (around ’71) I got the bright idea to strip off the original finish and stain/varnish it. As you can see, it looked pretty crappy. I left it in Illinois at my parents house when I moved to Colorado in 79.

    In 2009 my mom passed away, and when we were cleaning out the house I found that the bridge had ripped away from the body (as you can see in the photo). I was heartbroken over the loss of my mom at the time. Losing the old guitar didn’t help my mood. I put it into a pile for the junk man to take. I was really downhearted.

    My cousin Liz came over to the house shortly before the junk man arrived. I asked her if she thought that her brother Jerry would want it. Jerry is somewhat of a collector of guitars and an accomplished player. She brought it over to his house and I kind of forgot about it in the years that passed.

    Then one day while on the phone with Frank who was talking me through a repair on an oven in my pizzeria, we got on the subject of music. I’d known Frank only has a pizza oven guy over the last 15 years (Q-Matic ovens – the best pizza oven I’ve ever come across) and he had bailed me out many times when I needed old parts or instruction. We had never talked about music before, but during this conversation it came up.

    He told me that he enjoyed fixing up old guitars – especially Harmony guitars. I told him that I used to have a Harmony but got rid of it a few years ago. I later called Jerry who had saved the broken guitar from the trash pile and had been hanging on to it for all these years. He still had it! I couldn’t believe it. He and Frank got together and exchanged the guitar a couple of weeks ago and Frank began working his magic…

  2. I remember this guitar! The original and the varnished version, which seemed kind of cool at the time…but also kind of sad. I’m so glad Lizzie rescued this, brother. I don’t even remember seeing it at the time. Lovely pix and stories, and I can’t wait to hear the new version.

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