H801/2/3/4 & 2181/2/3

DISCLAIMER: I'm currently piecing the history of these guitars together little by little as I can. It's a bit tricky because unlike a higher end guitar like a Fender or Gibson, there's not a whole lot of information on these out there, so most of it is pieced together by clues of various other guitars.

The Harmony H-80x series starts with the H-801 and H-802, one and two pickup instruments respectively, though the H-802 might have had a longer day in the sun, then the H-803 in the late 1980's, H-804 in the 1990's, and the 218x series from 2003 till 2010.

The interesting things about these guitars is they ALL use a Teisco Del Ray derived design of sorts - seemingly based on the Tulip Bodied electric guitars from the 1960's that had those doily pickguards. And they CONTINUED to make these guitars for 40+ years. Unlike something like a Stratocaster, or Telecaster, these guitars DO look and basically ARE dated from their introduction - they literally hearken back to a time when a budget guitar was basically this, a plank with a okay-enough neck on it, 2 very cheap single coil pickups, simple wiring, and just enough adjustment to make it tolerable - the 1960's.

What draws people to these instruments, especially the H801 and H802 (the two with unique pickups), is their sheer tackiness, weird tone quality, and interesting characteristics that all stem from being a cheap guitar. As the design was slowly refined in the background to fit the current industry, these instruments stopped being as unique by the 2000's when they started using some pretty standard features save for the body/pickguard shape, and the bridge/tailpiece.

POSSIBLE ANCESTORS - TEISCO E-110 TULIP? (196x?-1976)

Above is the Teisco Del Ray E-110 "Tulip" guitar from the 1960's, this I believe is the ORIGIN model of the Harmony H-801/802/803/804 - effectively making this a 60's budget guitar design that lasted almost (roughly) 60 years on the market! This guitar shares a LOT of features with the H-801/802/803/804 - the early 802's had a treble side horn, the neck is almost IDENTICAL to what you would find on an early Asian made Harmony H-802 or 801 (Bleached Mahogany neck with a Indian Rosewood fretboard w/ 22 frets and a Zero Fret). The pickguard is very close to one of the 802's early variants as well, and it has the same knobs, and the pickup is of a different design but with a similar sort of setup, and the bridge and tailpiece are IDENTICAL to those found on mid the Harmony H-801/802/803/804 (the bridge and tailpiece changed on the 218X Series).

After some research from the Wishbook site, I've found the Tulip bodied guitars continued to be sold through J.C. Penney right through 1976! See The Ad Below. So Teisco was making these for quite a bit of time into the 1970's. This also could mean that Teisco was making the early H-801/802 guitars and 805 Bass Guitar.

Harmony 57-1401 - This is a very similar guitar to the H-802 but is different in body shape and it has a vibrato unit in a lot of cases (the H-802 never had a vibrato bar to my knowledge). This seems to be derived more off the Teisco Tulip ET-110 guitars than the H-802 despite having the H-802's wiring, bridge, and general overall squat styling.

Montgomery Ward's Wishlist 1984 - Now here is an actual Harmony H-802. Probably not the earliest example, but an example no less. This was around the time the archetype of the H-802/803/804 started to become standard. As we can see the neck has no logo, but it's still the same guitar as a Harmony H802. This too was built in Taiwan. They apparently, at this point, were still using "Bleached Mahogany" for the neck wood, rather than the Rock maple that would come later, probably sometime around 1985 or 1986. But most of the standard later H80x model acoutrimonts such as the white button and white plastic grommet non-recessed tuners on a single plate are already there.

The Harmony H-802 Was also seen hanging on some scenery as a prize on the "I'm Telling" Game show circa the late 80's, putting the H-802's latest build dates around 1987-1988.

Below Is A Shot Of all Three Guitars and Their Differences

THE HARMONY H-802 IN IT'S STANDARD DESIGN (1977?-1987)

Variations in body shape aside, the Harmony H-802 recipe has been in general the same - a top contoured plywood body about 3/8" (2CM) thick, routed for 2 pickups, 2 knobs, and 2 switches, with a neck made of maple, or bleached mahogany, and a maple (Maple necks only) or rosewood fretboard clad with 22 small frets, fake plastic pearl dot inlays, a zero fret, a plastic string guide "nut", either a bar or butterfly clip string guides, six on a plate tuning machine heads with white knobs and white bushings, a 2 ply pickguard, cast clamshell tailpiece, and cast non-adjustable (intonation-wise) bridge with adjustable string spacing (3 slots per string), a skinny 4 bolt neckplate reading "Harmony Est 1892" on it, and generally painted Black, White, Red, 3-Tone Sunburst, Blueburst, and occasionally is found in other colors as well. The 802 holds the distinction of being the only guitar on these pages aside from the H-801 that has the "ANti-Foil" pickups.

NECKS

The earliest guitars had "lawsuit" Fender headstocks on bleached mahogany necks with a single bar string guide that attached through holes in the headstock via a pair of nuts on the other side. These necks ALWAYS had rosewood fretboards on them, some even with binding, and they had 22 Frets, and dot inlays.

I'm guessing CBS sent them a C&D letter about the headstocks because not much long after appeared Bleached Mahogany Harmony headstock necks, later with Butterfly clip string guides added, probably to cut down on parts inventory since they were already using the same string guides on the H-80T Stratocaster copy model by that point.

Sometime by the late 1970's/early 1980's, the neck wood changed from bleached Asian Mahogany to a rock maple, and was available with an actual rosewood (Pau Ferro or Indian Rosewood) or maple fingerboard. These necks tend to be a pretty good sign it's an 80's model guitar.

BODIES

As I said before, three different bodies, the "Mustang" style, the "Tuplip" style, and then the "Standard" Style. I'm thinking the model may have started out as a Mustang copy - fitting since the Fender Mustang was a student guitar, then they decided to use a new body design, but they took the treble side horn from the tulip, then they adjusted it to fit in more with the modern guitar market and gave it a regular treble side horn instead of the flat Tulip horn. The last of these designed remained with this series until it's discontinuation in 2010.

PICKUPS

The H-802 is best known for it's bizarre pickups. The pickups appear, to the inexperienced, to be chrome "P-90 type" pickups. But these pickups are actually NOTHING like a P-90, they are more like a tiny version of the Fender Jazzmaster pickup - or their closest match is the "Goldfoil" pickups that have become popular recently - actually the construction is directly lifted from the "Goldfoil" style pickups found on Teisco and Guyatone guitars back in the 60's, just without the Goldfoil inserts and cut-open spots in the cover, giving them that kind of chintzy chromed up bar appearance. I call these "Anti-Foils" because they don't have any of the decorative foil background showing through the pickup cover, but use the same basic design as a Goldfoil. These measure in at around 4-6K Ohms, and are described as having a very "tin can/low-fi" kind of sound to them.

CONTROLS

The H-802 was the most elaborate of any on this page as well, as it actually had a method by which to turn the pickups on/off - which was apparently lifted from the Fender Jaguar. Each pickup has it's own 2-way single pole, double throw switch that turns them on and off. These then feed into a pair of 500K Ohm Potentiometers for Volume and Tone, and then out of a regular 1/4" phono output jack. One of the biggest ways to date one of these guitars (when intact) is the knobs. The earliest ones had Teisco style knobs, sometime around the early 1980's, Harmony started using regular Stratocaster copy knobs on this guitar until prodocution/sale ended in 1987.

BRIDGE/TAILPIECE

The bridge is a metal bar, with 2 threaded posts with thumbwheels attached to a baseplate that screws on with 2 screws. It is cast and looks very crude. You can only adjust the action, there are no adjustable saddles for intonation. It's not uncommon for people putting these guitars to serious use to switch the bridge out with a Gibson Tune-O-Matic or similar bridge.

The tailpiece is a cast-metal "Clamshell" design similar to what Kay, Teisco, Kawai, Guyatone, and so fourth were putting out in the 1960's. On this particular variant of the design, strings fit between a pair of "Fingers" under the tailpiece to hold them in place. For some this can make restringing a real challenge because you can't actually see how these actually FIT into the tailpiece, and I can imagine these are one of the biggest sources of dissatisfaction with these guitars.

Oddly, the tailpiece/bridge can be ordered as a combo online from a parts company in China, factory direct, so getting proper replacement hardware for this guitar should not be an issue.

THE HARMONY H-805, THE BASS VERSION OF THE H-801 (1977-1983?)

The Harmony H-805 was the bass version of the H-801 guitar, and so far, I think it's the only bass that uses this body style. It utilizes a similar pickup to the regular Anti-Foil, I figure the only difference is this pickup is probably wound into the 3K zone of resistance, and has 4 screws instead of six holding the retainer into the pickup casing.

A particularly noticeable thing that hints at the origin of this particular instrument's manufacture is the tailpiece, which is a Teisco Del Ray based design that is not height adjustable, but is intonation adjustable via a single bar of metal held in by 2 screws.

THE HARMONY H-803, THE H-802 MOVES INTO THE METAL ERA (1988-1990)

The H-803 is an odd duck, it's pretty much the same guitar as the H-804, except the wiring and the neck. It otherwise retains ALL of the same design criteria as the later Harmony H-804. For a short period of the late 1980's, it appears Harmony tried to sell more H-80x guitars by attaching a metal-styled neck on to a extremely outdated design not at all in line with the sound or playability of the times.

NECK

The neck is the biggest change here. We went from a regular 22 fret, 25.5" Scale neck, to a 25.5" scale 22 Fret, pointy headstock "Heavy Metal" style neck design. I think the reason behind this was because around 1988, "superstrat" guitars were all the rage with their pointy headstocks, and if they could put one of these necks on a H-802 (with reduced cost circuitry to boot). Aside from the headstock change, the rest of the guitar remained the same.

PICKUPS/CONTROLS

At this point Harmony made the entire electronics assembly cheaper by eliminating the pickup switches, instead wiring the two Strat-style RW/RP single coil pickups (replacing the original Anti-Foils) in parallel to the Volume and Tone controls. This meant they could save a few bucks on switches. They also changed to a SINGLE sheet of black or white plastic for the pickguard.

OVERALL

The H-803 did not last that long, in part because it probably did not sell well having a Teisco era body mated with a Metal-era neck, and the other part being that the genre well known for pointy headstocks was drawing to a close soon, with Grunge and retro pawn shop guitars taking over - setting the stage for these to gain some appreciation much later on down the road.

THE HARMONY H-804, LAST CALL FOR HYPHENS (1989-2002)

The H-803 and H-804 did not come consistently with the same Strat variant pickups at all though. Some of them used plastic bobbin standard Stratocaster copy style pickups capable of using replacement pickup covers for an official Fender Stratocaster or similar guitar, while other units only appear to be a Stratocaster style pickup from the top, but with the pickguard off, all you see is a tall, Strat sized pickup cover with a metal plate on the bottom held on by rubber glue. Inside the pickup, all of the components (magnet, wire, polepieces...etc) are encased in Parrafin Wax. The latter of these pickups can and sometimes are hotter than the other variant, and also are less prone to squeal due to their wax-potting heavy construction.

H-804's can vary VASTLY, ranging from very rounded body edges and H-802 pickguard shape (higher edge on the treble side of the neck slot part) with multi-ply pickguards, to 218x pickguard shape (more symmetrical) with sharper edges on the body, and more pronounced contouring. Earlier models tend to more often than not have plain maple necks, more rounded body edges (suggesting Saehan as a possible manufacturer), and the H-802 pickguard shape, while late 90's models almost look like a 218x series guitar by the less as rounded body edges, but with bigger bridge hardware, and an arm contour. Also, the pickups vary.

The most common colors for these are Black & White, but a Sunburst Model was also made for at time, as shown in the 1996 J.C. Penney Wishbook Catalog. The Sunburst seems to be the most uncommon version of the H-804.

Sometime around 1999, Harmony did one last round of H-804 to use up stock by painting these in a thin coat of red paint and labeling them with the "Rogue" brand for the Musician's Friend catalog. These are pretty much the same guitar as the late 1990's versions. They sold at $99.99 USD just like the same guitar under the Harmony brand did in the J.C. Penney catalog except minus the case, strap, cable, and mini amp. These guitars are easily identified because the red finish flakes off easily under heavy playing, as it's usually just a thin coat of red paint over the older black paint job used for the Sears/J.C. Penney guitars. Actually, if you scrape off the paint over the headstock you will sometimes find a "Harmony EST 1892" waterslide in gold under the red repaint and Rogue waterslide decals. Other than that, the only other significant identifier that these are the same guitar is because despite the headstock relabel, they have a regular Harmony EST 1892 neckplate of the skinner H-804 variety.

THE HARMONY 281x Series (2002-2010)

In the early 2000's, around 2002 or so, Harmony reissued the H-804 as the 218x model number series - the x being the last digit which tells you the COLOR of the guitar. See below on the left side of the screen.

Also, the bridge/tailpiece changed on these guitars. The new units are STAMPED instead of cast. This gives them a lighter density, which changes the tone somewhat. Also, the string spacing is thinner by default, and only one notch per string on the bridge, which seems to make an attempt to be somewhat compensated. The bridge is set on a stylized stamped base that is thinner than the original H-804 base and would not work with the original bridge. Strangely, these parts are not available aftermarket unlike the other parts for the H-804 on back.

It also seems on these guitars the quality, shape variation, and so fourth, were a LOT more consistent. Most 281x series Harmonys will be very much the same from example to example, unlike the H-803 and H-804 which I think vary depending on what building house was making that particular production run. I think these may have been made at the same plant the early First Act guitars were built at as they have a similar build quality to them, and tend to be a much better guitar right off the bat than the H-804/803/802 tend to be.

The 218x series was sold in J.C. Penney and Sears Holiday Wishbooks up until 2003 and 2006 respectively. They were listed as the "Harmony Vintage Guitar Kit" and were roughly around the same price as the older H802/H804 versions were. I remember these still being sold on E-bay as late as 2015, so it's very likeley the poor sales in the Wishbook catalogs lead to an overstock of these which lead to htem being sold on e-bay to clear inventory. This is also likely as their building house, probably the same one making the Harmony Jr. guitar, changed the brand name to something else by that time.