Vintage Harmony or Montgomery Wards Electric Archtop?

[rbrentmason]

Having a hard time figure out what this guitar is. It looks like a vintage 1950's Harmony Archtop Electric Guitar. Maybe an earlier version of Vintage 1950s Roy Smeck archtop . Also saw a picture of a Montgomery Wards 8884 that looked similar. It has a p13 pickup with a volume & tone nob. Stamped inside "S-57-E Made in U.S.A." and "1066H57".
Any help on the make & value would be great.

[VintAxe]

I think you are right rbrentmason. This looks like a slight variation of the H57 sold by Harmony as the Roy Smeck.

This guitar was probably contracted from Harmony and sold by a different distributor.

The Blue Book suggests a value of $600 in Excellent Plus (95%) condition and $475 in Excellent (90%) condition for a H-57.

I'm sure you have already seen this page on the Harmony Database, but others might be interested:

[rbrentmason]

On the same Harmony site they have a picture of a Montgomery Wards 8884
It looks exactly the same as mine with a different coloured pickguard but it really doesn't give any other information.

[VintAxe]

Sounds reasonable, your guitar was likely built by Harmony for Montgomery Wards. The Harmony Roy Smeck was an early 1960's model that was discontinued in 1965. I checked my early 1960's Wards catalogs and your guitar is not listed. During most of that period the single pup hollowbody had off-set knobs and a batwing style pickguard.

I wonder if your model is late 1950's?