Harmony Blue Canoe

Harmony throughout its history, along with most of the other Chicago manufacturers, produced lower end Ukuleles with decorated soundboards. Sometimes this extended to the fretboard and headstock, sometime to the sides and back. There were two ways that applied this decoration, one was by transfer decal and the other was painting using a stencil. The decal method was more expensive and so used less and the Harmony canoe Ukulele is a classic example of the stencil method, (though of course the Harmony Logo on the headstock is a decal transfer so technically it's both), and probably the most common. Mine is a single colour stencil but as you can see from the one on the right there are also 2 colour stencil versions and some later versions of this theme had a natural soundboard and a red painted stencil. I have also seen the Water Skiers motif in exactly the same colours as mine, including the white plastic fretboard, on a Silvertone branded Harmony Ukulele.

My Canoe is in fair shape for its age. The stencil picture is perfect but the Ukulele itself is starting to show signs of age and the action is a little high for my taste, so this probably won't be one I play a lot.