I’ve finally received my Artec MHFC93-CR from EY Guitar, the order got lost and took 3 months to arrive. Last weekend I got around to install it on my 1946 Levin Model 32 and I’m pretty impressed with how good it sounds for being so inexpensive.
Unfortunately I had to remove the pickguard, well it was actually quite annoying and always in the way when I played so it was more of an aesthetic loss. I also installed an old vintage strap button while I fitted the pickup so now the guitar is ready to be gigged.
The installation was pretty straight forward in the end but it took a bit of figuring things out so I completely forgot to take more pictures. First I made a small hole under the fretboard extension on the right side, where the cable from the pickup could enter the body without being visible. Then I drilled a hole for the endpin jack, just like a do when I install the endpin jacks for my LR Baggs, with a 1/2 inch or 13 mm flat spade drill bit straight through the end block. I measured two cables from the endpin to the f hole, fished them up before I cut them and then soldered them to the endpin while taped to the top for not disappearing inside. Once the cable from the pickup was fished up I checked which was which and then soldered them together and stuck them to the top on the inside with a little clip on the bottom side of the f hole so they can’t be seen.
Artec is perhaps not the worlds fanciest brand, especially not if you judge them by their website, but I like them and they sound very good for being so cheap.
I managed to find another Morris W-50, this time with hexagon inlays instead of snowflakes as on my earlier Morris W-50. They sounds pretty similar, very rich and full tone with clear highs. I guess the 3-piece back is adding to that full sound and of course it makes them very pretty to look at too. In my opinion these TF Morris guitars are almost up there with K. Yairi and the best Japanese builders. It doesn’t look like Brazilian rosewood, but it has some really nice figured dark rosewood back and sides with quilted maple in the middle and a solid spruce top.
The guitar came from a collector in Scotland and was ready to play when it arrived, I didn’t have to do anything to it.
The two TF Morris W-50 together, the left one from around 1976 and the right from about 1979
I was offered to buy a 1963 Levin LS-16 from a Swedish collector just before Christmas last year. Of course I jumped on the chance, not only is it a really rare bird, most of them were branded Goya S-16 and sent off to the US, but I had also been looking for another guitar like my dad’s old 1966 Levin LT-16 for quite a while. Unfortunately this Levin LS-16 got stuck in Sweden for a year, my mum didn’t want to send it so I couldn’t bring it back to Spain until I went back home for a funeral now in November. In the time of it’s absence I managed to find and restore a really nice sounding 1965 Goya T-16 so now I suddenly have 3 Grand Concert sized Levin guitars from the mid-60’s. Not that I complain, I really like both the sound and the playability of these guitars and this last one is probably the best sounding of all of them. According to Vintage Guitars Sweden, the most resourceful site about Levin guitars, the main difference between the Levin LS-16 and Levin LT-16 is the bracing pattern. The LS is supposed to be ladder braced but mine is X-braced just like the LT-series, I think that became standard in the early 1960’s. They also have different machine heads, dot inlays in the fretboard and I think that the LS-series have a bit more V-shaped neck profile.
Levin LS-16 / Goya S-16 Grand Concert size: Body width: 380 mm, body length: 480 mm, body depth: 98 mm. Fingerboard width: 43 mm, scale length: 630 mm. Spruce top, mahogany back and sides, 4-ply bound top, single-bound back. Mahogany bolt-on neck with adjustable truss rod. Metal Levin truss rod cover with a star and “1900”. Single-bound rosewood fingerboard with centred pearl dot inlay. Rosewood bridge, nickel plated strip tuners. Natural finish and ten year warranty
I finally managed to get another Levin LT-16, just like my dad’s old guitar that I learned to play on as a kid. His is a 1966 Levin branded one and this one is from 1965 and has the Goya logo on the head stock. These guitars normally don’t come up for sale that often, I guess because they are really well sounding and perhaps the 000-size is very sought after too. It took two years but finally I managed to get my hands on one, in bad shape when it arrived but now fully playable again.
Levin LT-16 / Goya T-16 Grand Concert size: Body width: 380 mm, body length: 480 mm, body depth: 98 mm. Fingerboard width: 43 mm, scale length: 630 mm. Spruce top, mahogany back and sides, 4-ply bound top, single-bound back. Mahogany bolt-on neck with adjustable truss rod. Single-bound rosewood fingerboard with bass side pearloid dot inlay. Rosewood bridge, nickel plated individual Van Gent tuners with metal buttons. Matte natural finish and ten year warranty
There was quite a lot of work on this one. First I re-hydrated the guitar for a week, just a wet sock in a bowl inside, which made the cracks close up quite a lot. I removed the bridge and the pickguard and glued all the cracks on the top and reattached the back that was coming loose. I also flattened the top, it had a bit of a belly that I managed to get down with a flat piece of wood covering the top that I clamped down for a couple of days.
I re-glued the bridge and replaced the 10 cm of missing binding. Someone had also sanded down the neck, which I hate, so lacquered it with a couple of coats of Nitro and sanded it smooth.
Levin guitars normally lack side dots for the 9th and 12th fret, which always confuse me while playing, so I added 3 dots. I reattached the pick-guard and cleaned up the original Van Gent machine heads. Levin uses a rather clever bolt-on neck system which makes neck-resets very easy. You just loosen the two bolts inside and then you can sand down the heel, it takes time but it was easier than removing the whole neck.
I have heard a lot of good, and some not so good, things about Sigma guitars over the years but never actually tried one. To be honest, I really didn’t know anything about the brand until this beautiful Sigma DR-41 arrived and I felt curious and started to read up on them. I guess one big reason why there are both avid supporters and fierce haters of Sigma could be the big changes in production over the past 45-years. The brand was Created in 1970 by C.F. Martin & Co as a line of inexpensive guitars to compete with all the far east brands that flooded the market at the time. The first generation of Sigma’s from 1970-76 were made in Japan but came with adjustable bridges and looks very inexpensive to me, I haven’t tried one so they might be great. When the second generation of Sigma’s arrived in the later half of the 1970’s they really started to look like Martin guitars and the build quality seems to have improved a lot, at least by the look of it. From around 1976-1984 Sigma produced the now classic DR-line, these guitars seems to be ridiculously collectable and very popular because you rarely see them up for sale. I have a feeling that most of them live somewhere in the US and are owned by middle aged men that bought them new as their first proper guitar around 1980 and since they still sounds really good they would never sell them. I have nothing against middle aged men or guitar hoarders, I’m 35 and an avid guitar hoarder and of course I still have the first guitar I bought back in 1993.
I have had at least 20 different Japanese acoustics in my house over the last couple of years and this 1980 Sigma DR-41 is easily my favourite so far.
The DR line consisted of DR-8, DR-9, DR-11, DR-14, DR-15, DR-28, DR-28S, SDR-28, DR-35, DR-41 and DR-45. I’m not entirely sure what DR-8 to DR-15 were based on, but DR-28 to DR-45 were pretty accurate copies of the Martin models with the same number. The guitar I’ve managed to find, the Sigma DR-41 looks very close to a Martin D-41 and I’ve seen pretty convincing Sigma versions of Martin D-28 and D-35’s too. Apparently there is a very rare version called Sigma DR-14, which is a DR-41 but with a 3-piece back, that was imported through Levin in Sweden, which makes sense since C.F. Martin & Co bought Levin in 1973. There are actually quite a few of the earlier 1970’s low end Sigma’s that were imported through Levin for the European market as well. It seems like the earlier Sigma guitars were made by Tokai through Kasunga Gakki but I really don’t know if all Japan made Sigma’s were produced by them or not. I have a feeling they might have used a lot of different factories during their 13 years in Japan.
I couldn’t resist so of course I changed the machine heads for Wilkinson WJ28NGD as soon as I got the chance. I just can’t stand those big bulky Japanese 1970’s machine heads.
Sigma stopped the production in Japan around 1983 and moved everything to Korea, later Taiwan and finally Indonesia. Martin claims that all Sigma’s where sent to them in Nazareth, Pennsylvania to be inspected and adjusted by Martin personnel before they sent them out to the dealers, which I doubt for the later Taiwan and Indonesian guitars. In 1981-1982, Martin imported partially assembled Sigma guitars from Japan and then put them together themselves in Nazareth, these were labelled Sigma Martin USA DR-28N and DR-35N. The Sigma story seems to be a bit shady from the 1990-2000, C.F. Martin & Co lost the rights to the name for a while and there seems to have been other companies producing Sigma guitars and then Martin got it back and closed it down in 2007. In 2011 the German company AMI Musical Instruments GmbH purchased the rights to the name and relaunched Sigma Guitars that are now being produced in China. There is quite a lot of information on Wikipedia about Japanese Sigma guitars. I also found this Sigma site really helpful.
1980’s ad for Sigma guitars, with my beloved Sigma DR-41 far right
I really didn’t know what to expect when I got myself this Sigma DR-41. I just bought it because I’m so insanely gay for any guitar that looks like a Martin D-41 or D-45, or actually any guitar with a volute on the back of the head, hexagon markers and a lot of mother of pearl inlays. At first I didn’t like this Sigma much, I thought it sounded stiff and boring but after two days with the pump and a week of heavy playing I was sold. I’m not sure if all Japanese Sigma’s are this good, but this guitar is freaking amazing. It’s easily up there with Morris and K. Yairi, perhaps even better, see the second video where I compare it to my K. Yairi YW-1000.
It’s been a while since I posted anything in my little DIY series, How to…, like me previous post about How to… reset a Levin neck or remove a bridge. I did carve a little floating bridge for my Levin 65 over a year ago but now it was finally time to carve a proper ebony bridge for my K. Yairi YW-1000.
I thought about getting a pre-made Allparts ebony bridge at first but felt that it would be more fun to make one myself from scratch instead. I ordered some rosewood and ebony blanks from Madinter, it thought it could be good to have some extra at home, and got started. First I removed the old bridge, it had two screws that was a bit tricky to get out but eventually I figured it out. I removed the bridge with a spatula that I heated on a normal clothes iron, it works like a charm every time. Start in a corner and work yourself towards the middle and be careful when it starts to loosen up so you don’t break it off and chip the top, it should come off slowly and without force. I planed the ebony blank and then used a cabinet scraper to get it even. I copied the old bridge and drilled the holes straight away. It felt easier to do this before the bridge was shaped, it would also have saved me a lot of time in case I messed up the holes and had to start all over again. Luckily everything went fine.
Once the bridge was sawed in to a good size, I made it a couple of millimetres bigger on all sides, I drew the outlines of the final shape. I mounted the bridge blank on a piece of scrap wood with two screws so I could more easily work all around with the bridge firmly secured. I used a chisel to carve out the shape on the sides and from the top down towards the wings. I got a good round shape with a half round rasp and then it was just a hell of a lot of sanding to remove all the lines from the rasp and to get it smooth and nice.
I glued the bridge on and after 3 days I strung up both E-strings and used a drill as a saddle so I could move it around until I got the intonation right, I forgot to take a picture of that. I marked out the saddle and then sawed a 3 mm slot. Next step was to create a bone saddle to match and string it up. Easy peasy, well it was a hard days work but it was easier that I thought.
I guess people might have noticed that I’m quite obsessed with Levin guitars, but there are actually other Swedish guitar brands that I care about too, like Hagström Crafton, Bjärton and Lugnås. I recently found my first steel string Bjärton, I have had a nylon string since my mid teens but never actually played on a steel string Bjärton until now. This is an awesome looking Hagström B-60 or Bjärton B-60 as it was called in Sweden, it’s the same guitar but since Hagström was more famous abroad they used that name for the export models. They were built by Bjärton in Bjärnum in the south of Sweden. It’s a pretty great guitar, loosely modelled on a Gibson J-50, Bjärton made a legendary Gibson J-45 copy in the Sixties called Hagström H-45 or Bjärton J-45 which was used by David Bowie and a lot of others. That model came with or without factory installed pickup and they even made a 12-string version. This Hagström B-60 is slightly more modest and looks pretty basic. It’s a nice sounding guitar, even though it has a bolt-on neck which should kill the tone completely, I guess the solid woods and massive neck block is helping with the sound.
Hagström B-60 / Bjärton B-60 Body width: 410 mm, body length: 510 mm, body depth: 120 mm
Spruce top with X-bracing, mahogany back and sides
Mahogany bolt-on neck, unbound rosewood fingerboard
Single-bound top and back, rosewood pin bridge
Van Gent machine heads, natural finish and 10 year warranty
Introduced: ca 1972, available for export under the Hagström brand
The guitar was in pretty good shape when it arrived. I did the normal cleaning, polished frets and oiled the fretboard and then installed a bone saddle and ebony bridge pins to improve the sound
My main challenge was to try to get the Van Gent machine heads clean. The guitar smells like it has spent the past 40 years in the company of an old pipe smoker so I assume that’s actually tar and nicotine that has built up over the years. I’m an old ex-smoker myself so to me it smells like pure heaven.
A couple of weeks ago I came across a really nice looking Harmony Monterey H1325. The only way to date these guitars is by the second stamp inside, if you can find it, giving the year and month. Unfortunately I can just see 784H1325 and the second stamp JAN in mine. I assume it’s from the late 1950’s judging by the head logo and the lack of trussrod since that was introduced in 1964. It’s a really nice playing and sounding guitar, not as loud as my Levin archtops, the 1951 Levin Royal or 1946 Levin Model 32, but still a very nice guitar. Harmony guitars were mass produced in Chicago during this time and even though they are made from solid woods they feel a bit low budget, in a good way, I guess that’s why they are so damn awesome and look so rock n’ roll.
Harmony H1325 – Monterey
Acoustic archtop – Brown shaded
Production years: 1952-1972 (other years possible, not verified)
Spruce top, birch body – Grand Auditorium 16 1/2 in. Unusual sunburst pattern in bands. Neck has a trussrod from 1964.
There was a lot of cleaning to do and two cracks that needed to be glued. One large on the upper bout and a smaller one on the top and then I glued down the heel a bit better which got the action down. Except for that it was in pretty good shape for being around 60-years old and all original.
The original case has these awesome looking shipping stickers on it, I presume from when the guitar left America for Germany by boat in the 1950’s carried by the first owner.
The top left looks very much like my Harmony Monterey, having said that, the model number inside mine is H1325 which match the bottom left. Taken from a 1959 Harmony catalogue
I also got myself two late 1960’s H162 from the US that I need to restore. First of all they need a neck reset but then I was actually thinking of removing the back and X-brace at least one of them. Taken from a 1959 Harmony catalogue.
Rondo, built by Levin in Gothenburg Sweden in 1960
Today is wife’s birthday so tried to be a good husband and got here an old guitar. I found her a little Rondo, a mail order guitar built by Levin in the late 1950’s. I have actually never seen one of these before so I was quite exited when it arrived. It surely feels, plays, smells and sounds like a Levin. Rondo was made by Levin for Musik AB Westin & Co, a music store and publishing company in Stockholm with a large mail order business. It looks pretty similar to a Levin 119 and was made for both steel and nylon strings, this was pretty common on smaller Levin guitars in the 1950-60’s. It’s a very nice little guitar to play and it has more volume and sounds sweeter than I expected, perhaps because it’s fan braced instead of ladder braced. My wife seemed very happy with it too when she got it this morning.
Rondo
Non-cutaway. Body width: 320 mm, body length: 455 mm
Body depth: 95 mm, scale length: 595 mm
Spruce top, maple back and sides, fan braced
Single-bound top, unbound back, unbound headstock
Unbound rosewood fingerboard with pearl dot inlay
Mahogany neck with non-adjustable T-shaped duraluminum truss rod, rosewood bridge, stainless tuners
Natural finish, one year warranty
It was in pretty good shape when it arrived. I had to glue a couple of small cracks, polish the frets, oil fretboard and machine heads and give her a good clean but that was it. The only problem was that this had to be done when my wife wasn’t around so I’ve been a guitar repairing ninja for the last week.
Levin Model 32 made in Sweden by Levin in 1946
Unfortunately I had to remove the pickguard, well it was actually quite annoying and always in the way when I played so it was more of an aesthetic loss. I also installed an old vintage strap button while I fitted the pickup so now the guitar is ready to be gigged. 
The installation was pretty straight forward in the end but it took a bit of figuring things out so I completely forgot to take more pictures. First I made a small hole under the fretboard extension on the right side, where the cable from the pickup could enter the body without being visible. Then I drilled a hole for the endpin jack, just like a do when I install the endpin jacks for my LR Baggs, with a 1/2 inch or 13 mm flat spade drill bit straight through the end block. I measured two cables from the endpin to the f hole, fished them up before I cut them and then soldered them to the endpin while taped to the top for not disappearing inside. Once the cable from the pickup was fished up I checked which was which and then soldered them together and stuck them to the top on the inside with a little clip on the bottom side of the f hole so they can’t be seen. 
Artec is perhaps not the worlds fanciest brand, especially not if you judge them by their website, but I like them and they sound very good for being so cheap.
I thought about getting a pre-made 
I glued the bridge on and after 3 days I strung up both E-strings and used a drill as a saddle so I could move it around until I got the intonation right, I forgot to take a picture of that. I marked out the saddle and then sawed a 3 mm slot. Next step was to create a bone saddle to match and string it up. Easy peasy, well it was a hard days work but it was easier that I thought. 
A late 1950’s Harmony Monterey H1325, made in USA
Claescaster 