Baxendale Conversion Harmony Roy Smeck Early 1950’s - Original Black Lacquer

This is an early-mid 1950’s Harmony Roy Smeck model guitar that has been fully remanufactured with the trademarked Baxendale Conversion Process that transforms the sound and playability of these vintage department store style guitars. This guitar is 16” across the lower bout and has a spruce top over birch sides and back. We have also replaced the original pearwood fingerboard with a more solid rosewood fingerboard. This guitar comes with a new guitar warranty and comes in its original chipboard case.

Baxendale Conversion is our trade marked green tech process of remanufacturing old department store style guitars into new real relic vintage guitars.   

Unlike other guitar makers and factories who make a new guitar and then faux relic it to make it look ‘played in’ we take these old guitars made with good quality endangered woods and rebuild them from the inside out with our tuned scalloped proprietary bracing design which greatly enhances the sound and tone of the guitar. This improvement in sound makes these guitars compare quite favorably to other premium vintage guitars that would sell at a much higher price point.

We also improve the playability of the guitar by straightening the neck, planing and refreting it and changing the neck angle to maximize action and sound.

Also included in our process is a new improved pin style bridge, new compensated bone saddle and bone nut as well as new vintage style tuning gears.

When we begin our process we remove the bridge and neck. Next we carefully remove the back, by first removing the binding then carefully separating the back from the sides.

Once the guitar body is apart we then remove all of the internal bracing structure. At this stage we fix any structural defects such as cracks or missing or bad linings. Next, we clean out the insides and prepare it for the new bracing. 

Our proprietary tuned scalloped bracing is now installed into the guitar. We also replace the back bracing in most guitars as well. Our bracing design is a hybrid design that Master Luthier Scott Baxendale designed after spending four years at Mossman Guitars building high end acoustic guitars, and then three years at Gruhn Guitars, in Nashville, studying prewar acoustic guitars. 

These guitars included the best Martins and Gibsons from the Golden Era of the mid 1930’s. We also studied Larson Brothers guitars designs and many others. Our design has elements of 1930’s Martin and Gibson bracing as well as from Mossman and Larson Brothers guitars.

Once the new bracing is installed we then put the body back together and begin on the neck work. We plane and refret the neck before resetting it to our new improved bridge. Once the neck is back on the guitar we level sand the fingerboard and then install the new frets.

At this point we are ready to begin the set up and adjustment and then the guitar goes through a QC process to clean it up and do some minor cosmetic touch ups.

Once we finished the guitar it is now a New Remanufactured Baxendale Conversion. Our remanufactured guitars come with a lifetime warranty to the original purchaser for all structural and playability issues related to our rebuild.

These remanufactured guitars are actually the greenest tech in a ‘new’ guitar because we are repurposing all the old endangered woods rather than cutting down trees.