Circa 1963 Harmony H-56 Roy Smeck

For yesterday’s Catch of the Day, we featured a 1930 Harmony Roy Smeck Vita-Guitar, a guitar that Smeck endorsed in the early part of his career. Today we’d like to feature a guitar he endorsed in the later days of his career, the Harmony H-56 Roy Smeck. Unlike the Vita-Guitar, which had a pear-shaped body and a bridge that looked like an airplane, the H-56 looks like a conventional archtop. The body is constructed of solid birch and, because Smeck was a showman through and through, he insisted it be painted a dramatic midnight blue enhanced with gold sparkles. The guitar sports, as the Harmony catalog called it, a “time tested ‘Tone-Emphasizer’ pickup.” I actually got to play this very guitar and I thought it sounded very good, with a raw, rough tone that is well suited to the blues. It’s missing its original pickguard, but as Gryphon Stringed Instruments, its current keeper, is only asking $850 for it I think that can be overlooked.

The Blue finish does look very nice up close. It’s sort of like staring up at the night sky.

In every issue of The Fretboard Journal, we feature some of the most beautiful fretted instruments known to humanity. Sadly, most of the time they belong to someone else and aren’t for sale. With our new Catch of the Day column, we scour the web looking for world-class instruments that you can actually buy for yourself, right now.