Another Japanese Guitar - Sekova Hollowbody

While on a business trip, this week, I visited a music store in Grand Junction, which I have frequented for nearly 20 years, now.  I bought my red 1966 Harmony H-72 from from Hart Music, in 1997, and I always stop in to talk to Jan on the way through.

This time, in response to my usual, "Got anything cool and old, since I saw you last?" Jan told me that he didn't have anything remarkable.  Then, I spied this guitar hanging way up high, on the wall.

"What about that?"

"Oh, that?  It's not worth much..."  He then quoted me what I thought was a really low price, so I bought it.

It is a Sekova, one of the less well-known Japanese guitars from the old days.  Apparently built in the factory which also produced Aria guitars, among others, it is outfitted with the standard 1960s Japanese Teisco-style pickups and a very Teisco-like control panel.  These parts were probably actually sourced from Teisco.  The tuners, and the quality of construction (including multi-layered body binding) put it somewhat higher up the scale than most of the Teiscos I have owned, however.

I feel a bit guilty for buying yet another guitar, so I have put this one up on eBay.  If it sells, then I turn a quick profit.  If it doesn't, then I will take that as a sign that I am meant to keep it (for a little while, at least). 

We'll see how it goes.

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Happy Birthday, Bobby G

This was my daddy's favorite hymn.  It may not be the best version, ever, but I just wanted to do it in Daddy's memory.

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The Blues Are Calling

  Luckily, it's not blocked for the blues, however...

I bought this phone at the thrift store, a couple of days ago, for the $6.99 marked price.  Why, you might ask, would I want an old rotary phone?  Well, I really didn't.

But, I did want the handset.  The speaker in the earpiece of the phone produces sound by converting electrical impulses into vibration, which produces the sound you hear on the phone.  It will also work in the opposite manner:  It will convert vibration into electrical impulses.

Wired to a 1/4" jack, then glued to the inside of the top of my cigar box guitar, it will pick up the vibrations of the top and transmit them, through a cord, to an amplifier.  (I didn't like the tone in the original position, which you can see at the bottom of the picture, so I moved it to the upper half of the face.)

The output jack, located on the lower left corner of the body, is relatively subtle.  I don't think it detracts from the looks of the guitar, too much.

And, it sounds pretty good through the Pignose amp, in my opinion.

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Hootchie Cootchie Cigar Box

Another acoustic song on the cbg.

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Cigar Box Guitar

A few weeks ago, I decided that I'd try my hand at building a cigar box guitar.  Having listened to a lot of Seasick Steve, lately, I figured I'd go with three strings.  I have the St. George set up as a 3-string, and I'm having a good time playing slide on it.  But, I think that the cbg works even better with 3 strings.

I went to the Rockler Woodworking store, over on Colorado Blvd, and picked up a 1x2x48 stick of Jatoba wood (Brazilian Cherry).  Jatoba is hard and dense, so I hoped that it would hold up well to string tension, since I wasn't planning on using any metal reinforcing.

I wanted to build the guitar in a fairly traditional manner, using no power tools other than a circular saw and a drill.  Eventually I deviated from the traditional tools by using a Dremel and SuperGlue, in the interest of saving time.

 I started off by roughing the shape of the neck in with a knife.

Then, I went to the wood rasp to refine it a bit.

Eventually, I used sandpaper backed with duct tape to do the final shaping.  I used the circular saw to remove the wood where the neck runs under the body, and where the tuners go.  It was tedious, and nerve-wracking to make repeated cuts, side by side, removing a saw-blade's width of material with each pass, to remove the wood.

I glued on a 1/4"x2" maple fingerboard (left over from another project, also bought at Rockler) and marked the fret positions.  I then used my miter box and saw to slot the fingerboard.  A little round-file work made room for the frets to be set down into the wood.  The frets are cut-off sections of 14 gauge stainless steel bicycle spokes, and they are held in place with SuperGlue.

Once the frets were set, I started work on a bridge.

The bridge is made from a bone nut glued onto a short section of the same maple which makes up the fingerboard.  I "ebonized" the maple with a Sharpie.

The tailpiece is a belt buckle which I found at the thrift store, with three holes drilled in it for the strings to pass through.

 Sound holes in the side allow for more air movement which, in turn, allows the top to vibrate more freely.

So, there it is.  Later, I plan on installing a piezo pickup, so that I can plug it in.  Until then, it is acoustic.  To hear it, check out the video.

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Further Proof That I Am Not What You Would Call a "Collector"

I tend to end up with more than one example of things, such as bikes and motorbikes, guitars and amps, records, books, and comics...but I don't consider myself a collector, necessarily.  I'm just a guy with 15 different pocket knives, all of which have been carried and sharpened so they are usable.

Collectors own things simply to own them.  To a collector, a sharpened knife is ruined, and any modification of whatever it is that they collect makes that example inferior to one in a completely stock state.

But, this isn't a post about collectors.  This is a post about a guitar I just bought;  a 1969 Harmony H-82G Rebel, just like the one I owned 30 years ago, when I was in college.

Here I am, playing that guitar circa 1980.

I have a soft spot for the thinline-style Harmony hollow bodied electric guitars.  One of my all-time favorite guitars I have ever owned is a 1966 Harmony H-72, which is a slightly more upscale model than the Rebel.  I bought my H-72 in unused condition back in 1997, and had it sitting in my coffee shop.  Lots of people played that guitar there, and many wanted to buy it.  Luckily, I never made a deal on it.

I've missed my Rebel, ever since the ex-wife talked me into selling it, along with about 10 other guitars, shortly after we bought our first house.  She was of the opinion that all of those guitars were wasting space.

Anyway, I decided, a couple of years back, that I would like to get another Rebel, preferably the rarer Avocado Green model like I had in the old days.  So, I started watching eBay, and bidding on them.  I always seemed to get outbid by $5.00, because I have a maximum amount that I am willing to pay for one of these.  Finally, last week, I ended up winning one.

I was ecstatic that I had finally scored one of these guitars. 

It was a little rough around the edges, but it is over 30 years old.  They can't all be as clean as my H-72.  So, I was fine with it, cosmetically.

What I wasn't too happy with, though, was the tuners.  While they appeared to be stock, they were actually a collection of parts from three different sets of tuners.  Click the picture to make it big, and check out the screws and cogs on each tuner.  The top tuner has a replacement cog (and post, which you can't see from here), but it at least works.  The third tuner down has a replacement cog, which is the wrong size, and is almost impossible to turn.  This rendered the G string virtually non-tunable.

I tuned the rest of the strings to the G, and plugged the guitar into my amp, and tested it out.  The neck is great, the sound is fine, and playing it was like stepping back in time.  It was everything I wanted...except tunable.

That was last Monday.  I spent this week thinking about what I wanted to do.  Should I find a set of six-on-a-plate original-style tuners and keep the guitar "stock", or should I just use the extra set of Telecaster-style tuners I picked up in Waynesboro, Tennessee, last summer?

Here's what I decided on:

I re-drilled the headstock for the nicer tuners and bolted them down, this afternoon.  I'm not worried about resale value:  I don't plan on reselling this guitar on the collector's market.  It has found it's final home, more than likely.  So, rather than replace the non-usable stock tuners with a newer version of what are, after all, sub-par units, I decided to make the guitar easier to deal with when I am playing it.

Here, for comparison's sake, are the Rebel and the slightly more upscale H-72.  Some of the upgrades on the H-72, compared with the H-82 include the block inlays on the fingerboard, as opposed to the dots on the Rebel...

and a bound headstock, where the Rebel's headstock is unbound, along with nicer tuners (though they are still six-on-a-plate).  The tuners on my H-72 are stock, but they still work well and I see no need to replace them until they become problematic.  At that point, I will go with the same style tuners I installed on the Rebel. 

I need to find some knobs for the sliding potentiometers.  That's another place where I will end up with not-as-original parts, mainly because I can't find a source for the originals.  It's unusual to see one of these with all of the knobs there, so it seems like some vintage guitar parts vendor would stock replacements, but none do.  I suppose it's a pretty small market, even if 90% of the owners of these guitars are in need.

I love the green color, and the back of this guitar is in pretty decent shape.  It's not unusual to see a lot of belt-buckle rash on these, as the paint is not particularly durable.

So, here's the full Monty, with the new tuners.  I think we are going to make some interesting, if not beautiful, music, together...

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Progress on the Tele

 A couple of weeks ago, I actually got the Thinline Tele put together.  I used the original bridge, with the string stops cut off and notches cut into it to clear the new Tune-O-Matic style bridge, to mount the bladed humbucker in the lead position.

I accidentally cut the notches a bit too wide, and you can see the pocket for the pickup at one corner of the plate.  I picked up a cheap Tele copy for parts, at the pawn shop, the other day.  So, I have another bridge to use, in order to make it look a little better.  I think I will eventually take this one off, use it as a template (with the correction to fix the problem), then take it somewhere to have it cut with a plasma cutter.  Using the tools I have, it's difficult to make it pretty.

For now, though, I am just going to leave it.  It works, and the imperfection of the pickup mount is of small concern.  I am more interested in how it plays and how it sounds than I am with how the tiny details look.

And, it plays and sounds the way I've always wanted a Telecaster to be.  This is the first one I've had on which I like the sounds of both pickups, and I love the feel and playability of it.  It's definitely a keeper.

I'm eventually going to sand off the decals, and re-varnish the headstock.  I don't want any confusion about this being a Fender, or a Squire, or an anything.  I've mixed and matched and modified the guitar and its parts to the point that I claim it as my own.  For now, the crow sticker from the weird thrift-store acoustic covers most of the stock decal.

Now, I just need to make some music with it...

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