Hey all, Ernie here with a piece from from David Buck, who felt compelled to do a pretty sizable refresh of a piece he wrote last year on a certain kind of guitar with a certain retail tie. I’ll let him get to it. Today in Tedium: Every guitar player probably remembers their first axe, whether it’s a hand-me-down discard from a previous generation, the music store rental, the Pawn Shop special or the rare brand new instrument. For others, the first guitar may have been the Department Store Special—that is, a guitar from Sears, JC Penney and Montgomery Ward. My first guitar was a 1963 instrument my dad purchased from Sears (then abandoned in a closet until I discovered it at age 14) and is long lost to time, though its replacement does have ties to the company (more on that later). In today’s Tedium, we’ll take a look at the legacy of the Sears guitar and the Harmony Company, along with a playing a few other harmonies of our own along the way. — David @ Tedium

1916 The year Sears & Roebuck Co. purchased Harmony Guitars. Sears-Roebuck acquired the guitar maker ostensibly to take control of the ukulele market, after the Hawaiian four-string instrument exploded in popularity the year before. They chose to team up with the Harmony Company—one of the largest manufacturers of stringed instruments in the world at the time. This partnership eventually led to a variety of guitar/uke offerings under the Supertone—later Silvertone—name.

$2.50 The price Muddy Waters paid for his first Stella guitar. Purchased by Waters from the Sears catalog, this guitar would take him on a journey through the blues—first learning to play by studying Robert Johnson songs and then attending concerts from another blues legend, Son House helping develop the direction for his style. Some reports say Waters may have sold his horse to raise the money for his guitar, but regardless of the how he obtained it, one thing is certain—the man is a legend and one heck of a harmonica player to boot.

“My first guitar was an acoustic—handmade by my best friend’s father when I was six years old. It had hand-painted playing card hearts and spades for fret markers—and the action was so high, I almost gave up trying to learn! So I purchased a simple acoustic from the Sears and Roebuck catalog, sanded down the finish, then hand-lacquered the top. I put it out in the garden to dry, then my neighbour decided it was a good time to mow his lawn … so it dried with little bits of grass and dust settled into the finish! I still have it—and it plays okay!” — John Oates—a.k.a. the half of Hall and Oates with the prominent mustache—talking to website MusicRadar about one of his first guitars, an inexpensive Sears model.

“That particular guitar is the vehicle whereby the first Led Zeppelin album was written, the second album was written, the third album was written, and the fourth album. It’s the guitar that actually culminates in playing ‘Stairway To Heaven.’” — Guitarist Jimmy Page, talking about the Harmony six-string guitar he used in the early days of Led Zeppelin. The guitar was on display—along with 130 other famous instruments—during the Play it Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll art exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in mid-to-late 2019.

(photo by the author) Rediscovering my own Harmony: A personal anecdote I love the sound of Harmony guitars. Toward the end of my Nov. 2018 piece about Seattle “funge” band The Presidents of the United States of America, I briefly discussed modding my Harmony H162 acoustic guitar to function as a basitar/guitbass. It failed spectacularly, resulting in what appeared to be permanent damage to the guitar. My instrument was manufactured after Sears and Harmony parted ways, but it still has all the qualities of a department store guitar. I’m no guitar tech and certainly not a luthier. I’ve been playing guitar for 20 years. For most of that time, I’ve rocked a pretty low maintenance highly playable Ibanez Artcore. I knew how to change strings and adjust the action, but very little else. I still kind of sucked at playing—though I’ve improved a great deal over the past year—but the thought of an easier-to-play instrument appealed to my hobbyist sensibility. So, I went about modifying the old H162 … and immediately ran into trouble. The strings I chose were much too thick for the fragile neck of the guitar and significant bowing occurred. There were a myriad of other problems—caused by a combination of wear & tear, lack of maintenance, age and my own DIY failure—so, frustrated with my lack of guitar repair knowledge, I decided to learn and made fixing up the guitar a project. To get this thing up to a performance standard, my first step was the library. I checked out a few books on guitar maintenance and repair, followed by online research. Fret Not Guitar Repair was invaluable, as were r/guitar on Reddit and too many forums to list here. Finally, I took the Harmony to a guitar tech friend of mine who assisted me with the remainder of the repairs. Now, the guitar plays great and doubles as a slide guitar. I acquired some guitar picks and a brand new slide, to really make my department store special shine. I also bought a baritone guitar, but that’s a story for another time.