I made another thing

[GuitarSlim101]

So, I'm a big Marc Ribot fan, and I've developed a particular fondness for the Harmony H44 Stratotone that he started using when he was playing with Tom Waits. If you aren't familiar with the H44, it was one of Harmony's first solid body electrics and was released as their answer to the Tele and Les Paul. It was a small bodied, neck through, single neck pickup, trapeze tailpiece guitar with a stupidly massive neck and a full 25 1/4 inch scale. They've developed quite a following and sell for a lot of money. I'm too cheap to buy a real one, so I made a fake one.



It's not an accurate clone, but it satisfied my needs. The neck is walnut with a fat V profile (1 inch thick at the first fret and tapers up to an inch and a quarter), alder body wings, a 24.75 inch ebony fingerboard because I had it sitting around, a GFS P90, a proper vintage tailpiece, and a pickguard cut out of a copy of Def Leppard's Pyromania. For being a tiny guitar, it sounds huge. It ended up fairly heavy, but is really resonant when plugged in. I need to make a better bridge and tweak the neck profile a bit, but I'm digging it. Sorry I don't have more pictures of the build process.

[Chankgeez]

That looks great.

[skullservant]

This is awesome! Great work

[ThurberMingus]

This guitar would fit right at home in a noise rock band. If it was mine it would spend a lot of time in the air.

[culturejam]

That's awesome!

[kosta]

Nice one!

[Gone Fission]

Nice! I think you nailed the important thing with he fricking huge neck. Curious what you think about the bridge-tailpiece setup as compared to more conventional alternatives.

[GuitarSlim101]

Thanks!

I think the bridge/tailpiece combo has quite a bit to do with getting the right tone out of this guitar. The short trapeze leaves a pretty shallow break angle over the bridge, and there are a lot of overtones and sympathetic vibrations that get picked up. One of the surprising things about the originals is that they have a tone that is very reminiscent of a hollow body guitar, and I think a lot of that comes from the trapeze and wood bridge.

A common modification of these guitars is to add a couple of extra screws on the tailpiece so you can crank the string bar a bit lower and get a better angle over the bridge, which I'm playing around with, but I like the more open tone with the shallow angle. Plus hitting the tailpiece when it isn't screwed down causes some neat, feedback overtone swells when playing at the appropriate volume.

[GuitarSlim101]

Also took a quick and shitty iphone video of some quick and shitty noodling into my 5e3. There's much clipping, but it at least gives a basic idea of the tonezzz...zzz





Quick and shitty

[Gone Fission]

I wish my quick and shitty noodling was so good. I get what you're saying about the hollow body vibe there--very cool instrument!