Harmony Holiday Stratotone Holiday was a house brand of Alden's department stores who simply had the Harmony print Alden's Holiday brand on Harmony guitars headstocks when being made at the Harmony factory. They are identical to Harmony H45 1-pickup Stratotones. This Stratotone has the early version of the DeArmond Goldentone pickup, aka "motel soap bar" or "hershey bar" pickup. The pickup and body style signifies that this guitar was made during the late 1950's or early 1960's after which the newer grill-top DeArmond Goldentone pickups replaced the older version. I will be delighted to partially disassemble this guitar to retrieve the pots codes for a serious Buyer. Interesting note is that Mr. DeArmond was the first to popularize fretting-hand finger tapping of the strings onto the fretboard ....now known as the finter tapping playing technique. He started that in the 1940's to demonstrate the acute sensitivity and dynamics of these "hershey bar" pickups which had been installed on several brands of guitars since the 1940's. These are great playing guitars with highly dynamic pickup tone to kill for. |
