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1953 Harmony H-44 Stratotone
An entirely unique sounding guitar, the H44 is dark and expressive, with a clear, smooth, pure, and harmonically penetrating tone. It’s exceptionally dynamic and touch-sensitive and is an outstanding blues and slide guitar. Marc Ribot, Tom Waits, Blake Mills, and Kevin Bright are all H44 players, if that helps understand what these guitars are all about!
This example is original but for a replaced volume pot and some solder that we had to clean up, and a changed jack plate. Tuners, nut, frets, bridge, control knobs, switch, tailpiece, pickguard, and finish are all factory original, and the guitar has been set-up here at Folkway. The original Hershey Bar pickup is perfect and sounds heavenly. These early DeArmonds have much lower DC resistance than the later Gold Foil pickups, which is their secret sauce, and this one measures up at 3.5k. Copper-flake paint shows some green oxidation and is worn away to the primer on the lower bout. The neck finish has been sanded off leaving a smooth bare wood that feels great.
Huge neck, 1-23/32” nut width, deep carve that gets progressively more massive up to the body joint. 2-1/4” string spread at the bridge, 25” scale. 5.5lbs.
