Harmony Guitar Tuning Machine Bushings

[dhoenisch]

Hello all. I think this is my first post here, though I signed up to do so about a year or so ago. Can't remember.

 

Anyhow, I am currently restoring a 1969 Harmony Stells H942 acoustic guitar (their top-o-the-line Stella at the time), and I am struggling to find the bushings for the tuning machines. On eBay, they are selling, for what I feel is way too much. I tried a used music shop in my area, and was able to find the correct tuning machines (had to buy two sets to get one complete set), but the guy didn't have the bushings (I do have three of them that were still not missing from the guitar). Anywhere else I go, they just look at me funny. I have also tried buying some bushing-like pieces of hardware (can't remember what they're called) that looked like they would fit, but I am only getting close, but nothing that is fitting the tuning post and hole in the headstock.

 

Well, I guess my question is, is there any substitute that I can use for bushings without modifying the headstock? Does anyone know where I can buy them, or buy reproductions of them?

 

If worse comes to worse, it seems that I will just have to buy one of those crappy Stella guitars that are a dime a dozen just to get the bushings from them.

 

Thanks for any assistance you all can offer,

Dan

 

P.S. If this should be posted in that do it yourself forum, sorry, I just felt that this may have been the best place for this.

[Freeman Keller]

StewMac and LMI sell replacement bushings, and StewMac publishes the dimensions of all their tuners so you can mic yours and compare them.

 

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tuners/Tuner_parts/Tuner_Bushings.html

 

It would also be possible to either convert your guitar to more modern tuners (you can fill and re-drill the holes) or have a machinist fab you some new bushings based on the old ones. Is it a slothead? Some old slothead tuners are very hard to find and just about need to be rebuilt. There is a trick of using mandolin tuners on some old slots - I can see if I can find the article.

 

I've also got a box of old tuner parts - post a picture and some measurements and I'll see what I've got.

 

oh, forgot may manners - welcome. You've been hanging around without saying anything - time you joined in. I would like to see some pics of your old Stella.

[Freeman Keller]

You might give this guy a shout too - he mostly deals in really old Stellas, but might have a idea for you

 

http://www.stellaguitars.com/

[dhoenisch]

Thanks, Freeman. I just don't get into these message boards too much, so I don't post much. This is one of the times that I needed some help. I guess I should post more. It's kind of like that, you scratch my back, I scratch yours.

 

Anyhow, here are a couple of "before" pictures of my beloved Harmony Stella H942 (hope I'm attaching them correctly).

 

In the last picture, you can see the tuning machines. The one on the top are the correct ones. Below that, you can see the press fit bushings. It's just a very thin metal that is pressed inbetween the post and the wall of the hole, so the Stew-Mac ones won't work. I'll have to get the measurements. I definately want to keep the original tuners. One thing Harmony did well was to use good tuners on these guitars. I definately do not want to modify the headstock at all on this guitar.

 

Also, the Stella site you posted, it looks like that guy only deals in the Pre-Harmony Stella guitars.

 

In case you, or anyone else is interested, I purchased a Harmony Stella H942 for my sister at a garage sale over three years ago for $20, and to this day, I feel that it is one of the nicest sounding guitars I've played, so I have been on a search of my own, until about two weeks ago when I found this one on CraigsList for $30. This one is a bit rough, but definately restorable. I don't have a good enough picture of it, but you can tell on the back of the neck that it was played constantly since it was new, which is as it should be. The finish is warn off, down to bare wood on about 1/3 of the neck, and the frets are warn down quite a bit.

 

Well, so far, I removed the "Graffitti" from the guitar, which was song titles and names and other stuff written in permanent marker and paint marker. It all came off with some Goof Off. I have removed the bridge, and steamed down and clamped the top wood to remove the slight behind-the-bridge warp. I located the original toners, as mentioned earlier, and buffed them out to a nice shine. Removed and buffed out the pickguard. I have removed all the frets, and prepared the fretboard for the new frets (fill small chips, glue in large chips, sand). There was a crack in the body just beside the fretboard, so I reinforced that on the underside with a piece of maple. I added a bridge plate overlay since the original was quite warn. Also, the bridge was glued and screwed onto the body of the guitar, so I tossed the screws, and filled the two screw holes with some ebony dust and cyno. glue. Sanded that all down, and it's much better looking than the large screw heads.

 

What's left is to install, level and dress the new frets, fix one more small soundhole crack, Shellac, sand, and a few coats of Laquer, sand down all new finish (after a two week curing), glue bridge, make bone saddle for the bridge. Make a new bone nut, install pick guard, add new end pin, install tuning machines and bushings, when I get them all, string, adjust as necessary, play and smile.

 

A lot to do, but I think it will be worth it.

 

Dan

 

P.S. I forgot to add that I will not be restaining this guitar. It has that worn in look that it deserves, so I am just adding finish over it all.

[Freeman Keller]

Totally cool project. How is the neck angle - that tends to be a problem on some of these. If you can pop one of the bushings out and mic it - ID, OD, length and maybe the size of the "grommet" part I'll look thru my box of goodies. Possibly TAH will see this - he has several of these Harmony Stellas and might know of parts. Note that the measurements might be metric - many tuners are - but if you use a digital caliper we can calculate.

 

And you're right, it will be completely worth it.

[guitarist21]

That's a very cool project. Just for fun? Keep us posted, because I'm sure it will end up great and I'd love to see the finished product.

 

Ellen

[T.B.]

Oh yea, please return and tell use how the Harmony rebuilt is going and it's completion. Knockwood reminded me of the gentleman at "The Podium" who refurbishes old Harmony's. It appears he always upgrade those turners on those old axes so, maybe he'll be willing sale or make a deal on some brushing.

 

http://www.thepodium.com/pc-15316-94-1969-harmony-h-165-olivia-bfont-colorredsoldfontb.aspx

 

Trina

[dhoenisch]

Thanks, all, for the comments. I'll try that guy who restores the Harmony guitars. It's worth a shot.

 

I'll be in the workshop this weekend, so I'll measure those bushings if I don't hear back from that Harmony fella before then. As for the neck angle, I am not sure if it's correct or not yet. The action was high when I got the guitar, but as I said, there was a slight bulge behind the bridge which raised the action, that, plus the crack in the body beside the fretboard pushed the neck in a little, so now that those two are taken care of, all I have to do is install the new frets, and I'll get a good idea about that neck angle, and whether or not I'll have to do a neck reset or not. To be honest though, I think with the bulge fixed, and that crack repaired (I clamped the body of the guitar down to the workbench, put a block of wood under the heel, and clamped the neck with enough pressure to lign up the crack, than used hot hide glue to glue on a piece of maple under it) the action may be okay. The saddle was high on the bridge too, so when I make the new saddle, I'll be able to make it a bit smaller if that will put the action where I like it. Anything to get out of a neck reset. What a pain that is.

 

Ellen, this project is more than just for fun for me. This guitar is going to be my keeper. I'll probably play this one more than any of my others. I play Bluegrass music, so the wider neck and the wider string spacing will be nice for flat picking/finger picking. It sounds really bright, especially with the bone saddle upgrade I'm going to do (remember, my sister has the same guitar), and has rather booming bass for a 000 style guitar. I've repaired many other guitars for fun, and just gave them away. I recently gave away an acoustic/electric Epiphone guitar ($400 new) that I got for free because the headstock was broken off. After a reglue, and some finish toughups, that guitar was very playable, though the crack was still noticeable from behind. I just gave it to my friend at church since he leads the singing, and that guitar sounds great plugged into the PA system. I have yet to sell a guitar that I have repaired. This is probably my first "restoration" project. I put that in quotes because I am not restaining it to make it look new. I want it to stay in it's distressed form, but new finish will be added to protect what's left of the finish.

 

Oh, and I forgot to mention, the only non original thing, other than the bone upgrades, that I have done is to install side markers. Can't play without them.

 

I'll keep you all posted. I do regret not having my digital camera the last two times I was in the shop though. That's where a lot of work got done, and I was motivated, so I didn't want to wait, go home and get my camera, so I just kept working on it. I'll try to remember my camera this weekend to get some "during" shots of the guitar, and will post it to this thread as the work continues.

 

Thanks all,

Dan

[Krash]

If you look around this site, you'll find some other models that had the same tuners - should give you more options searching for bushings. As noted, the H942 was also sold as Fender 1010 and Airline 7078.

[dhoenisch]

Thanks Krash. I frequent that site a lot. I have an old Harmony guitar addiction, I guess. Actually, it seems that most Harmony guitars from the mid 1950s to the very early 1970s used the same tuners. My sister's 1950-something 3/4 sized Stella has the same setup, but since it's her guitar (though I bought it for her), I wouldn't want to take her bushings, though it was tempting.

 

Actually, I was just on eBay, and saw someone selling a complete set of the bushings. I hope they are the correct ones. At least by appearance, they look the same. I just hope the size is right. Anyhow, I purchased them for ten bucks, so I'll know by next week whether or not they'll work out for my guitar.

 

Also, my gold colored frets (close to the original brass ones), should be at the house today, so I can install the frets this weekend, I hope. I can't wait to get this guitar finished. I'm really looking forward to playing it soon.

 

Thanks again for all your help. I'll try to get some pictures posted of the work I have done thus far over the weekend.

 

Dan

[dhoenisch]

Okay, here are some pictures that I took over the weekend. I'm sorry that I didn't have any pictures before these, but once I get started with a project, I just keep going with it, and never think to take pictures of anything.

 

Anyhow, what I have done so far is I removed all the writing from the guitar with Goof Off. It seemed to be rather gentle with the shellac finish (unlike Goo Gone which would soften the finish). I reinforced a crack on the top by the fretboard by glueing a piece of maple under it while the neck was bent back to straiten the crack. Than, with an exacto knife, I carved away at it until it was unnoticable. I removed the nut and bridge. I also steamed the top of the guitar, and clamped it down to flatted a buldge behind the bridge. I also removed the pickguard and buffed it out, ready to go back on.

 

Here's a picture of the guitar after the above was done to it.

Yeah, I know, you can still see some ink. Actually, I can't get it out, and that is the only spot where the ink seeped into the wood. The finish was really bad in that area, so I'm just going to have to live with it.

 

I assembled a useful set uf tuners by combining two sets to get one good set.

 

Than, I removed all the frets from the guitar using flush cutting snips and a soldering iron with the tip modified to lay on top of the frets. There was a lot of chip-out, so I resorted in using a lot of cyno. glue. After glueing all the chips that I could, I sanded the fretboard with 400-grit, than 600-grit sandpaper.

 

Here's a close-up of the beautiful wood used for the fretboard. Why would they have ebonized it?

 

This last picture shows the new frets installed, leveled and crowned. I originally purchased gold frets for this guitar, but the slots were wider than the new fret material, so I used some regular fret wire that fit the slots perfectly. You'll also notice in this picture that I inlaid some side fret markers. I can't play without them.

 

Also in this picture, you can see that I am clamping another crack by the sound hole. Same process as above. It's just a small crack, so I used a really small piece of maple to repair it. I also tapped off where the bridge sits so that I can start applying a few coats of clear shellac. I don't want to refinish the guitar since it has character, I just want to add a few coats of shellac to protect what it has left. I was going to build up a laquer finish, but when I found out that this guitar was finished only with shellac, I decided to do the same.

 

Oh, and one last thing. Now that the frets are installed, I layed the bridge where it is supposed to sit (before I masked that area off), and it looks like I may have to reset the neck. Darn! I really didn't want to have to do that. Oh well.

 

Dan