A friend/co-worker gave me an old Harmony Rocket to fix up. This is a 2-pickup, double cutaway, whammybar tailpiece model, which I think means it's from the early '70s. It was his first guitar and it's been in storage for years. It's missing:
- the DeArmond Mustache pickup at the neck
- the pickguard
- all but one knob
- three of the "grommets"(?) that go in the hole where the tuning pegs go through the headstock
There are a bunch of holes drilled from a previous attempt to move the neck pickup.
The diamond-shaped plate holding the pickup switch is broken.
After searching for a newer, inexpensive surface-mount pickup that would fit under the strings where the relatively shallow DeArmond neck pup had been, I determined that there really wasn't such a thing. The closest I could find is a GFS NYII from Guitar Fetish. This is a little too tall to fit unnder the strings so I've experimented with spacers and shims in the neck pocket to get a little more height to the strings.
I've decided to get another GFS NYII for the bridge position. See:
http://store.guitarfetish.com/gfsnyodestsu.html
I'll either sell the original DeArmond, or keep it and put it on another guitar.
By the time I'm finished with this thing it's not going to look that much like a stock Rocket so I think I'm going to go in another direction with it. I'm planning on using a Les Paul pickguard rather than a repro Rocket pickguard. The NYII pickups and Radio Shack knobs I've put on it are balck and chrome so I'm planning on using black and chrome parts as much as possible to replace the missing bits.
To make it playable I needed to:
-Reverse the wires to the output jack to solve a hum problem.
-File (sand) the 6th fret down because it was high.
-Adjust the Truss Rod.
I've made a plastic replacement for the broken pickup switch plate. I'll either paint it black or make another one in black plastic.
I bought some Vituoso guitar cleaner and polish for vintage guitars. It did a *very* nice job on this guitar.
It's not finished but here's a couple pictures of it a lttle way into the project.
http://www.scottmcknight.com/ROCKETCU.JPG
http://www.scottmcknight.com/ROCKTWIN.JPG
More to come.
-Scott McKnight