[PATRICK OGLE PLAYING ON A HARMONY H165 ACOUSTIC GUITAR]

PATRICK OGLE: Hi. This is Patrick Ogle for Gearwire, and this guitar I have sitting here is a Harmony H165. I've been doing a lot of writing and discussing Harmonies with people over the last few weeks, and this is one of the more common Harmony models.

Why would you want one of these guitars? One reason is they actually sound pretty good.

[PATRICK OGLE PLAYING ON A HARMONY H165 ACOUSTIC GUITAR]

One of the reasons you don't want one is they don't stay in tune very well.

[PATRICK OGLE PLAYING ON A HARMONY H165 ACOUSTIC GUITAR]

That's because this guitar is from 19 -- I believe '68, so the pegs are a little bit funky on it. The other thing is that this guitar costs $67.50 new, okay? It is solid mahogany, and this one, unfortunately, doesn't seem to have an adjustable neck. If you go a year later than this, I think '69, this model had an adjustable neck after that which is nice. At least I can't see where you can adjust the neck on this. Maybe somebody who actually knows something about guitars could figure that out.

People are buying these now. I think I paid -- I paid for this one about 175 bucks or something like that, and that was maybe overpaying a little bit, but they do sound pretty good, especially for -- if you're looking for something that kind of have a beater guitar to hang around with just to play around with.

Now, I was thinking of having this completely rebuilt. Now you can see, if you look closely, there's some goo from a pickguard here and here. And the pickguard, I have it but it's ugly and stupid looking so I don't know why you would put it back on, take that and throw it in the garbage and have this cleaned.

I was going to have it rebraced. It has ladder bracing, and actually one of the braces has fallen out, and I was thinking of getting cross bracing. I'm going to discuss that with some people who know a little bit more about refurbishing guitars a little bit later.

But basically this is a pretty decent guitar. You should be able to get one for less than $200. Being 40 years old, the wood sounds much better than a new guitar. That is something we've gone over, I think that any time we've talked about acoustic guitars, is the wood over time, the sap in the wood crystallizes as one prominent guitar maker, acoustic guitar maker told me. And so, if you think of the difference, acoustic properties of sap versus crystal, you don't need to make too great of a leap.

Another thing is that if you're looking for a guitar for somebody who's just learning how to play, don' go down to target and spend $200 on something that's made out of like cardboard. Get something like this. There's a lot of them out there. Now, you have to be very careful also because you might see a neat-looking Kay Guitar, and some of the old ones they're old and they're still crap.

They also -- The other problem with some of those old Kays and some of the acoustics that you're going to find is they can be very, very difficult to play. So, if you bought one sight unseen, especially for somebody who's just learning how to play, you may turn them off the guitar forever. This, however, this the 8 -- Remember that. Remember the name, Harmony H165, Harmony H162. They're very playable guitars, minimal amount of work. Maybe you throw another couple of hundred bucks into it and you'll have a fantastic guitar.

On this one, as I said, the tuning pegs, you need a vise grip to turn the higher ones, and so I'm never tuning this guitar until those tuning pegs are gone. But aside from that, they're really nice. Buy them instead of like -- instead some cheap guitar because there is no -- there are very, very few guitars right now, acoustics, under like $300 that you would even want to own.

One thing that concerns me about this particular one is it looks like maybe the face on this is like kind of a little bit caving in. The neck seems to be straight but it could just be an optical illusion, but I'm concerned about that. I mean but even so, I mean it doesn't mean just because if there's a problem with the guitar, if there's any kind of minor problems with it, it kind of falls into the so-what category. But, you know, if you're going to spend money getting it fixed, you want it to be in reasonably good condition.

One of the problems when you buy stuff from Craigslist or online and you're just buying it from some guy who's not a music store or whatever, you're going to find out pretty quickly after you make a couple of purchases that you're going to be disappointed in what your [INDISCERNIBLE]. I was about a little disappointed when I got it and say that this one didn't have an adjustable neck, but that was my fault because I got the years wrong. But again, still for the amount of money I paid for this it's still a pretty decent guitar, but you know it's better if you can see it.

You know, the thing is you're not going to find music stores carrying these, you know, because they're not sought after guitars. I mean few places that carry used guitars, they're gonna be going after the Gibsons and the Martins and the Guilds from the early '70s and blah, blah, blah. They're not looking at these. You know, they might give you 20 bucks for one of them. They're not interested in selling these so you're not going to find them in music shops. You're going to find them in some Uncle Joe's garage, you know. So, but garage sales, keep an eye out for them there.

[PATRICK OGLE PLAYING ON A HARMONY H165 ACOUSTIC GUITAR]