Harmony H22 Bass: From A Time Before Bass Amps
Chris Laguna from Harmony Guitars is back with the company's sole Bass in from their Vintage series, the Harmony H22. This hollowbody bass's design is from an age when the electric bass wasn't actually supposed to be heard; Harmony knew they were going to have to improve some of the specs before it was played through the bass amps of today, so they gave the thing upgraded tuners.
Otherwise, this axe is all-vintage spec, with a single, gold-foil pickup that goes great with flatwounds. To preserve its yesteryear-tone, Chris thumped the H22 through a Vox AC15. Yeah, that's why he's playing though a guitar amp . . .
CHRIS LAGUNA: My name is Chris Laguna, and I am the VP of sales and marketing for Harmony. Here we have the H22 Bass. Here's another guitar that -- bass guitar that we replicated. We redid the old gold foil pickup on here. This pickup actually makes a sound like an upright bass. A lot of very famous bass players actually use this in the studio.
We also did the, once again, the original knobs. Pickup...
[CHRIS LAGUNA PLAYING THE HARMONY H22 BASS]
...and here we have a hollow-body bass, which you don't see too many off. One thing we did was we actually put better tuners on here, die cast tuners, which the original had very small open back tuners and didn't really stay in tune as well as the reissues do.
Once again, we set the neck on here as opposed to the original bolt on neck.
[CHRIS LAGUNA PLAYING THE HARMONY H22 BASS]
Even though this isn't through a bass amp, it actually still sounds like an upright bass, which will even sound more like an upright if you had it through a bass amp, but this definitely is a favorite among bass players.
H-22
Hi
i bought one of these basses, and i've asked chris in the video for about 3 months in an email as to what flatwounds, gauge and length is recommended for this bass without screwing it up, but they haven't got back to me yet. Does anyone know that could help me? Much appreciated.
Strings
I believe if you put on a set that would fit a "Beatle" bass, you should be fine. They should be long enough to be strung through the tailpiece and the tension should be safe.
I think the beatle bass is
I think the beatle bass is also a short scale bass, but the bridge is higher than the harmony about 4 inches in from the body, while the neck piece of the harmony is near the end. So maybe the strings might be too short
harmony h 22 bass
Its a short scale bass but it uses 34" scale eg.Fender P Bass length strings.I use and love the LaBella tapewound strings The core is thinner, so they will fit my '65 ish H22 I got the strings from Carvin $23 or so . The LaBella deep talkin' flatwounds might be nice too Ihave a set on my P Bass and they're great.
I just love this bass amp.
I just love this bass amp. The quality of this amp is so good. You cannot go wrong with it at all. Keep up the good work.
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