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| Sears-Roebuck 1971 Fall/Winter Catalog Image Credit: Archive.org |
About
In 1969, Alvis Edgar "Buck" Owens was selected to become one of the hosts of a new, summer show called Hee Haw and along with him came his uniquely painted guitars. In 1966, Semie Mosely, of Moserite fame, had built him an acoustic guitar done up in a red-white-blue paint job and, later, he acquired a similarly painted Fender Telecaster and Fender Kingman. Moserite was already in business building electric guitars and Fender had branched out into building acoustic guitars to mixed success before outsourcing production to a Chicago firm, Harmony. It's unclear if Fender influenced Owens but when it came to offering a product for the masses, nobody had a resume better than the Harmony Musical Instrument Company. Originally started in 1892, they were in the business of building acoustic guitars for nearly any price point and had a strong relationship with mail-order and retail businesses; including a thirty-four year stint as a subsidiary of Sears-Roebuck.
These guitars would retail for $82.95 with Owens receiving $2.50 as a royalty on each unit. As Silvertone World notes, these guitars were only offered in the 1971 Fall-Winter catalog and did not appear in the Christmas Wish Book or the 1972 Spring-Summer catalog. Sales figures are unknown, as is the case with all Harmony instruments, but perhaps the Owens estate has enough documentation to piece together the total balance paid from the company. We may never know but the short production run is surprising.
From what I've read, the H-169 reappeared in the collector's consciousness after Pat Smear played one during an MTV Unplugged concert with Nirvana. In the 21st century, musician Ryan Adams plays H-169s that were restored by Dan Erlewine. And most recently, the Buck Owens estate liquidated a number of unopened H-169s at auction which brought a few more examples into the market. As expected, being boxed up for decades means that they need significant work before being ready to play.
Further reading and sources:
Construction
These guitars were formed in the same molds and with the same dimensions as the H-162 and H-165 acoustic guitars that Harmony had been offering for decades. These were designated with the model number H-169 which can be found stamped on the inside of the back, just below the neck block. All three models are most closely related to a 000 size guitar and the H-162 and H-165 were fairly transparent attempts at offering a budget copy of a Martin.
Much like the H-162 and H-165, the Buck Owens H-169 has a solid spruce top, an rosewood bridge and fingerboard (Indian by this time), and 14 frets to the body. Unlike it's siblings, the H-169 has a celluloid-bound fingerboard and is constructed with solid birch back and sides rather than the, more expensive, mahogany. This isn't unheard of as Sears had ordered spruce topped, birch backed models earlier in the 1960s.
Stamps
Harmony guitars are reliable in their interior markings which tell us the model number as well as the year of manufacture. These markings are visible as ink stamps on back of the guitar visible through the soundhole. The first stamp you'll see is the two digit year of production and, as I mentioned earlier, all of these guitars were built in 1970. The second stamp is four digits of unknown meaning, the letter "H", and between two and four digits indicating the model number. The mystery digits are likely a batch number as they are not unique to each instrument but likely reference a grouping of instruments built at the same time.
Here are the batch numbers that I've seen. They don't mean anything but it's interesting to record them, I suppose.
- 8691
- 9902
- 9914
- 9894
Headstock Overlay
You can't escape a discussion about the Buck Owens model without addressing the defect that plagues them, a degrading headstock veneer. Harmony would adorn their nicer guitars with celluloid binding, pickguards, and sometimes the face of the headstock would be celluloid. They used to mold patterns and embossing into the facings but they would also leave them as a smooth backing for silk screen or decals. None of this was groundbreaking for the company as I've seen it on Harmony instruments as old as the 1940s. What makes these unique is how reliably they disintegrate and need replacement.
For those who are unfamiliar, one of the earliest commercially successful plastics is known as "celluloid" and was made from three main ingredients: cellulose, nitric acid, and camphor. It was a miracle material able to replace pricy, and frankly evil, consumer goods made of tortoise shell and ivory while being easier to mold than wood or metal. Celluloid found it's way into women's vanity kits, radio units, billiard balls, eye-glasses, clothes buttons, and much more as this material's uses seemed endless. But, for reasons that escape me as someone who isn't a chemist, celluloid is prone to breaking back down to something resembling it's original ingredients. This spells doom for collectors of old celluloid items and has led to it's infamy for it's role in the destruction of old film media as it shrinks, distorts, and readily burns when exposed to heat.
All celluloid is susceptible to this 'rot' but it affects some worse than others for reasons that I, again, cannot explain. Kluson tuning machines, for example, have good years and bad years for the celluloid tuner buttons so you can have a 1940s set of tuners with great buttons, a 1950s set with crumbled buttons, and a 1960s set with great buttons. Then you have Harmony's tortoise binding which is never a problem except for a short stint in the 1960s when that particular batch of celluloid degrades and crumbles away. Most famously, the 'mint green' Fender pickguards from the 1960s are actually a defect from the white-black-white lamination of celluloid where the green pigments in the black leech into the white. It's madness.
In addition to aging like milk, it also releases nitric acid which is corrosive to metal, wood, and itself which speeds up the degradation process. Since guitars are often kept in cases, this poses a real problem with lack of ventilation.
Celluloid's natural state is upside down and on fire - if I were to paraphrase a quote about helicopters
Repair and Restoration
The celluloid on the H-169's headstock and heel cap is of the unlucky batch that degrades quite spectacularly while the tortoise-colored pickguard and the white truss rod covers remain unaffected. The pickguard does shrink and cup which makes it difficult to keep attached on the instrument and the truss rod cover does cup, slightly, which could cause a rattle if you are unlucky. But when it comes to a Buck Owens Harmony guitar, you can guarantee that the headstock is damaged and has left a bit of a mess that needs to be cleaned up. I would not attempt to stabilize the overlay.
There have been a couple different methods employed by folks from a clear sheet with the logo printed on the back to spray stencils to a vinyl decal, which is what I am using here.
Removing The Rot
We begin by removing the headstock veneer using an artist's palette knife and separating the remaining plastic from the wooden headstock; this goes relatively smoothly as much has already detached but we do run into problems around the hardware. The toxic gasses have corroded the tuner posts, the ferrules, and the truss rod cover screws. The plastic truss rod cover is unaffected by the rot but the two, flat-head screws are rusted and one snaps at the head when I turn the screw. A piece of steel tubing with teeth cut into it works as a hollow drill bit to cut the wood around the screw and allow me to pull it out and glue a dowel into the void.
The tuner ferrules are stamped out of sheet metal and the corrosion has shredded them; they come apart in strips that I peel off using a set of end nippers. Our final piece of hardware is the tuners, themselves, which look like the columns of a salt-water dock complete with barnacles. I use a block of wood and a mallet to push them back through the headstock and keep a short section of 1/4" dowel nearby in case they become stuck. Everything on the back of the headstock is fine, the gears and such, but the tuning posts are ruined and will snap any string you try winding on them. This is from an era where American manufacturers were using Japanese-made parts on their guitars in an attempt to stay competitive so my collection of Waverly and Kluson parts is useless. I didn't have any tuner posts that I could swap these out for so the decision was made to replace them with a set of modern tuners.
Preparing the Surface
The face of the headstock will need a gentle sanding to remove adhesive remnants and this is best accomplished with a small block of wood and 180 grit sandpaper. A small block of wood is necessary because the headstock is not perfectly flat, in fact it may be cupped anywhere up to 1/16" across it's width. This is because the celluloid was bonded to the wood using a solvent-based adhesive which resulted in it melting into the wood fibers. As the celluloid shrunk, it pulled the wood with it until the bond was broken. There is nothing to be gained by trying to coax the headstock flat so I don't bother.
I choose to use a 0.09" white PVC pickguard blank from WD Music as my overlay material. Their oversized sheet fits two Buck Owens headstock facings and the scraps are useful to have around (is what I tell myself to avoid throwing them away). I wax the sides of the headstock, the shelf for the nut, and the truss rod hardware in preparation for epoxy which I've found to be ideal for this job. Masking tape is helpful too but I prefer wax right up to the seam as epoxy seeping under your masking tape can make a real mess.
I rough cut the overlay on the bandsaw and mark and drill the tuner holes to help with locating. At this point, it's also very helpful to mark out the truss rod access location and hog the majority of the material away with a saw and files. I did not pre-cut the truss rod access on the first Buck Owens I repaired and it was a hassle getting in there with chisels and gouges... After the surfaces have been prepped with 180 grit sandpaper, I apply a liberal coating of epoxy to the wood (which will soak it up) and a light coat to the plastic before clamping them together and letting it sit for a day
After the epoxy has cured, the squeeze out can be peeled off the paste wax and the sheet cut flush using a laminate trimmer with a ball-bearing flush cutting bit. That gets it close but not exact so I switch to a binding scraper to slightly undercut the edges so my new lacquer will sit flush with the old.
Are You Blue? Only in Color, Michael..
Finding the exact color under the aged and grimy lacquer requires a q tip, acetone, and some inspiration from art restoration videos. I had done this previously so I already had a rattle can of acrylic paint in a shade of blue that most closely matched the original color of the headstock. Be careful not to buy an oil-based paint or any specialty formulations. A plain-jane can of budget spray paint is, more than likely, going to leave you with an acrylic finish and acrylic happens to behave well with nitrocellulose. At this stage, it's helpful to gather some of your headstock veneer scraps from your saw because you'll want those for sampling lacquer tints. Finally, a quick scuff sanding on the face of the headstock will knock the gloss off and you're ready to paint.
Adding the Funk
The level of aging really depends on the condition of the guitar. If it's fresh out of the box, then it probably doesn't need much more than a slight tinting. This guitar had play wear, dings, dents, and a very cool vibe to it which should be reflected on the headstock. We don't want hospital white. We want Pat Smear. We need the grunge. The original headstock veneer was yellowed and the blue had turned a reflecting-pool green which provided a soft target for my color matching. I ponied up and purchased some TransTint dyes a couple years ago and they are worth every finger-staining penny. I chose Vintage Amber for my yellow and mixed some drops into a couple tablespoons of nitrocellulose lacquer and, then, added a smidge of Medium Brown to mellow that yellow. I had some scrap wood and plastic that I had hit with my acrylic blue so I was able to confirm the, full strength, color was what I wanted before diluting it with more lacquer. It's easy to add color intensity with more coats but it's difficult to take that color out once you've sprayed it.
It took a couple days as I would spray some color in a few separate instances throughout the day, let the solvents gas off, and then check the colors again. When I was satisfied, another day was spent applying clear coats to lock in the color.
Passing the Buck
After applying the clear, the lacquer needed to cure for a week before I was able to apply the vinyl decal that I picked up on Ebay. It's a pretty good recreation of the original and not outrageously expensive though I did screw up my placement on the first application. After a brief panic and realization that vinyl was bonding to the lacquer too well, I took a short walk before coming back with a heat gun to soften the adhesive and peel the letters off. The adhesive residue came off with naptha and then I was off to Ebay to order another one. Once that arrived, I cut some of the backing paper away, so I could check my positioning relative to the tuner holes, and marked some increment lines in pencil. This went far better and the logo ended up exactly where I wanted it. This is also sealed in with lacquer but I use really light, misty coats for the first few applications so the solvents don't create a mess.
After another week of curing, the lacquer isn't as risky to touch and I can proceed with installing the tuning machines, attaching the truss rod cover, and moving on with the restoration. This guitar received a neck reset, a new heel cap (tinted with the same funky lacquer as earlier), a bone nut, a bone saddle, some brace regluing, and a fret level and polish.
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