Silvertone H-633

Date stamp of F-68 which i believe is Fall of 1968. 19 frets (14 to body). Solid Spruce top (strangely, but NOT bookmatched)with ladder type bracing. the sides, back and neck are all solid mahogany. cant find that on many sub $1000 guitars anymore. the fingerboard and bridge are both very nice rosewood. bone nut(after market) and original plastic saddle. This model is the same as a Harmony Sovereign. Perhaps it became a Silvertone when they didnt bookmatch the top wood??? pinless bridge which has been reset and holding quite well. original tuners have been replaced with Ping 3 to a side tuners which do the job nicely. equipped with an adjustable truss rod which also happens to work. this particular guitar also sports a couple of poorly repaired cracks.

i play mostly blues based music. This guitar is well suited to anything I play. This guitar is very loud. yet it can be distinct even when played softly. Booming bass, and bright highs. absolutely unbelievable harmonics(this thing just sings). decent mids, but doesnt touch my Kay archtop in that dept. i recently brought this guitar to a "guitar center" to compare the sound to a Gibson J200....while the $3600 Gibson didn't sound terrible next to this $99.00 guitar, it didn't sound better either. they just sounded different. i smiled the whole way home!!!
I also own a Harmony Sovereign from 1963 which has a bone nut and saddle and sounds about 1000% better than this one. and this one is no slouch. if i didnt have the other sovereign, i would unwittingly call this a 10.

i have no idea how this guitar was set up out of the box....i got it 35+ yrs after the fact. there is a slight gap at the neck heel and body, but the neck is dead straight, and the action is not bad. i installed a bone nut when i got it and that dramatically improved the sound. it was somewhat flat before that. one of these days i will redo the saddle and that may improve the sound even more i hope. the finish is what you might expect from a 35+ YR OLD GUITAR....some finish checking, but not much (mostly on the top wood piece that had the fewer grain lines per inch). the guitar cleans up well, and presents half bad for a guitar with the pickguard missing.

this guitar is very well put together. very solid. the gap at the neck heel is about 0.003-inches wide. just enought to see light through, but not enough to be a problem. I imagine this may have been the result of being strung with 0.013's for 20+ yrs in its case in someones attic. that said, this thing is fairly durable to have lasted this long, and still be this solid.

This guitar was undoubtedly made for Sears (Silvertone was Sears house brand) by Harmony, as it is almost an exact clone of a Harmony Sovereign. Harmony went out of Business in the mid 70's so the customer support comes from me.

i have been playing for just under 2 years now after a 20 year layoff. if i could have anything on this guitar that it currently doesnt have, i would opt for a bone saddle, and a pickguard. but the pickguard is being nitpicky.