Grab-and-Go Beater: c.1980 Harmony H5422 Parlor Guitar

[Ed-in-Ohio]

I’ve been in the market for a cheap grab-and-go parlor guitar for some time. Responding to a local Craigs ad this week, I found this little gem - a c.1980 Taiwan built Harmony H5422 Parlor Guitar. Of all the guitars of this stripe I’ve looked at over these past weeks, this is the first one that had a good neck set, a straight neck, no cracks, and good playability. $50 later it was mine.

Because of its lack of neck issues, I’m guessing this guitar has spent much of its life with either nylon strings or no strings, although the steel string on it when I bought it were ancient.

I spent several hours last night giving the guitar some much needed TLC: I de-gunked the tuners (is there anything that Naphtha can’t do? ), lubed the tuners, lowered the adjustable bridge, improved the intonation (thanks to the incredibly complicated procedure of turning the saddle around so it was facing the right way ), polished the guitar with Stew-Mac Preservation Polish (that stuff is awesome), and restrung it with Peavey Phosphor Bronze Mississippi Mellows (11-52) [LOVE these strings].

The one issue I encountered was with the low-E tuner. As I approached pitch, the tuner would repeatedly skip and fail to catch. The fix? I simply tuned in reverse, under the post, effectively making the tuner a reverse tuner (see pic). This worked fine, and seems to be holding fairly well.

Since we are all proud acoustic guitar geeks here, here are the specs for this guitar:
¾ sized Parlor Guitar
Laminated Spruce over Mahogany (?)
Fretboard: Ebonized Hardwood (Maple?)
Slot-Head with traditional 3-on-a-side tuners
Non-adjustable steel truss rod
Frets: 12/19 (with a 0 fret)
Scale: 23.25”
Nut Width: 1 11/16”
Neck Profile: shallow C-shape (surprisingly modern)
String Spacing at the Nut: 2 3/16”
Lower Bout: 13.25”
Upper Bout: 9.75”
Width: 3 ⅜”
Adjusted Action at the 12th Fret (under the low E-string): 7/64” (just a hair high for me, but eminently playable.)

All in all, this is a delightful little guitar to play, and sounds much better than I ever expected for a $50 beater (below is a short video demo). The one piece of advice I’d offer for others looking for this type of guitar is to be sure to play before buying - Neck issues are sometimes hard to spot in photos. I looked at several guitars before this one that I assumed would be much nicer, but invariable neck issues rendered them unplayable.

Play on!

[Steve DeRosa]

Those guitars were marketed under a variety of names back then - when I started the guitar program at my old school we bought a closetful. FYI they also came in a hog-top version - I used to keep the dozen or so we had in primo shape, set aside strictly for "concert" and "solo" duty; pretty good-sounding for what they were, use yours well...

[DenverSteve]

Good find. Glad you enjoy it. I have never been able to have a true grab and go guitar and enjoy it. Every time I buy one and grab it my ears are comparing it to my better guitars. So I have just learned to take voyage air anywhere I need to go with a less worrisome guitar. Enjoy your new find.