Interesting reading. I bought two Harmony guitars in the 60's as they were what I could afford then. Traded both of them off and today, what was once about a $160 investment would yield $1300 to $1600 in sales. More than anything it tells you how much the dollar has devalued in all of that time.
Actually it tells you that what we bought because it was all we could afford is what younger folks now think have mojo because of the year they were built.
"It's comparable to playing a cheese slicer."
--M. Stillion
"Bargain instruments are no bargains if you can't play them"
--J. Garber
I like the part about prior to becoming president of Harmony, Kaplan was been president of The Kitchens of Sarah Lee....
kinda puts Gibsons recent leadership into perspective...
Last edited by Jeff Mando; May-06-2023 at 10:30pm.
Interesting slice of history!
My first mandolin was a Harmony kinda A style, bought new in 1982 for iirc 40GBP. Presumably Japanese made by whoever bought the name a few years previously.
www.stevetilston.com (double bass duties)
I still have the Harmony guitar my dad bought around 1930 when he was about sixteen years old, mail-order from a place in London called the St James School of Music. He got the guitar as part of a deal when he bought a series of printed lessons which took the beginner through the early stages of guitar playing. In my young teens, around 1957, I started learning on this guitar and using the lessons. One tune I remember from those sheets was the lovely Spanish La Paloma. No internet then, just a good postal service. The guitar came with a second bridge and a metal nut which fitted over the standard nut to raise the strings and allow the guitar to be played as a Hawaiian guitar. The neck is particularly club-like in size and there is no truss rod, but it is still very playable after nearly 100 years!
I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. - Eric Morecambe
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheOldBores
Mail-order guitar lessons, complete with learner’s instrument - and convertible, no less. Ah, the good old days. Brings to mind things from my youth like electronics correspondence course, Classics Club monthly books of literature, Columbia record club.
There’s a modern version I saw on the tele a few years back - a learner’s guitar with lessons from Brad Paisley, I think it was.
How cool that you have your dad’s Harmony, John, and it’s still playable! How I wish I had my dad’s Epiphone I learned on, but alas, it was passed to my brother after me and was lost after he died, I’ve had no luck discovering its whereabouts.
WWW.THEAMATEURMANDOLINIST.COM
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