CHARLIE SUBECZ: Hi. My name is Charlie Subecz. I'm the owner of the Harmony Guitar Company.

Harmony was founded in 1892 and for many, many years was a leader of quality musical instruments in America.

This is another one of our reissues, another one of the 14 reissues that has gotten tremendous response. This is the old Harmony Stratotone. This color is the Ritchie Valens Signature Series color. Ritchie actually owned a bronze Harmony and sanded it down and painted it in a wood shop in high school to this Buick Green color.

We have a licensing agreement with the Valens family, the very gracious Valens family, and Ritchie's autograph is on this guitar, and we've done a number of things to improve this that Chris will tell you about in a second.

CHRIS LAGUNA: Some of the improvements we did with this guitar, the original didn't have a truss rod in it so actually added one so you could adjust the action of the neck. We duplicated the original Hershey bar pickup. So, this all had to be tooled and molded. Once again, the original cupcake knobs, which are just some features that made this guitar very popular. We again did the closed-back vintage style tuners, which help it stay in tune much better. We also did the full neck through on the guitar just like the original was, so once again you get a lot better sustain than if we did it with the set neck.

This is the Ritchie Valens signature green color. We also had this available in a bronze color, in a black color which are also very popular. This has been a very popular guitar. This guitar also comes with two bridges, so a lot of people do like to play this as a blues slide guitar. The second bridge actually allows you to raise the action on the strings so you can play slide guitar much more comfortably.

I'll just play a little bit so you can hear the variation in the tones.

[CHRIS LAGUNA PLAYING ON THE HARMONY H44 RITCHIE VALENS SIGNATURE STRATOTONE]

And here we also have a rhythm/lead switch, so you can actually switch it from your baritone setting to your rhythm/lead setting, which gives you a brighter tone.

[CHRIS LAGUNA PLAYING ON THE HARMONY H44 RITCHIE VALENS SIGNATURE STRATOTONE]

CHARLIE SUBECZ: Next year is the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. The Valens Family was knd enough to bring Ritchie's original guitar, original Stratotone Harmony guitar to the NAMM Show last January, and it was very emotional.

This guitar is selling out for two reasons. One, it's an excellent, excellent guitar, and as Chris had said, you can play slide guitar on it also. But the other thing is that it just has tremendous sentimental value to the Ritchie Valens legacy, and we're proud as Harmony Guitars to keep that legacy alive.