This turn of the century Harwood has seen a long hard road over the years. When we received it it was unplayable, the top was caving in, the frets were shot, the neck angle was awful, there was no bridge, several cracks and a couple of holes. The good news was that the original finish was intact and the back and sides were really nice Brazilian rosewood. We decided that if were going to make this guitar playable again that doing a "brace conversion" just might make this guitar something special. We have done this type of conversion on several solid wood vintage Harmony's with wonderful results. (link to harmony conversion page)

We had to take off the back anyway, so why not improve the sound by replacing the minimal bracing with a scalloped X design used on a 1930's
Martin. So we disassembled the instrument and rebuilt it from the inside out, keeping as much original as possible other than the bracing in the
top. We also reset the neck angle, fixed all the cracks and holes, did a full re-fret and made a new "pyramid" bridge. The results were spectacular, from being unplayable this guitar became the instrument that you can't put down. The owner, who has quite and extensive collection of great guitars, never plays his D-45 any more because the sound of this Harwood can't be beat. He spent about $1200.00 having this restoration done and his guitar competes with pre-war martins that are worth $10,000 and up.