Harmony H42 Stratotone

This is a close sibling to the Stratotone H44. Very interesting guitar... the neck and body are one piece. No, not a set-neck, or neck-through... it is just one slab of wood. The result is unmatched sturdiness, resonance and sustain. Electric guitars don't get any more basic than this. A single "Hershey bar" DeArmond pickup mounted in the neck position, stacked volume/tone controls, and a switch that essentially acts as a tone control bypass. I'm not even sure how to rate it for features. It doesn't have much, but what it does have sets apart from virtually every guitar out there. The neck is a monster... literally like clutching the big end of a baseball bat, 19 medium frets on what appears to be an ebony fretboard. Not sure what kind of wood the neck/body is made of. About 25.2" scale. The bridge looks like it was taken off a classical guitar and screwed onto this one. When I first got it I assumed it had been, but then on the Harmony database page they have pictures of other H42s with the same bridge. The body is small, single cut-out with "Harmometal" binding. This is that aluminum stuff they used to put around kitchen cabinets back in the 50's. At first I thought it was something someone had tacked on to the one I picked up, but no... they came from the factory like that.

Awsome! It sounds great before you plug it in, and when you do, you just know that this the sound that defines the electric blues tone. Sweet, resonant, mellow, but yet with that single-coil edge and chimieness. It is sort of a one-trick-pony though. You hit a chord and it rings forever.

I picked this up at a pawn shop for $25... had no idea what it was... at first I thought it was homemade. Someone had painted it red (they originally came in yellow or green), and in addition to the "Harmometal" binding they had put a strip of chrome foil down the middle of the body and headstock. The pickguard looks like it was cut out by high-school shop students. It looks like a piece of junk. But where it counts, it comes together. Even though the neck is huge, it is still comforable and very playable. I have fairly large hands, so it works well for me. The action is low and there are no fret buzzes. The neck is straight as an arrow.

It's over 50 years old and still works as well as the day it was born, so I would have to give it a 10 here. It's sturdy enough to use as a lever to lift the end of a car. You could strap a axe head on it, chop down a tree and it would still be in tune.

How do you even begin to rate something like this? It is so weird, but does what it does so well. The demand and prices for these old Stratotones (especially the nearly identical H44) is going crazy. Everyone should have one of these in their collection, so if you find one, don't even think about it... just get it.