An ES for Less

Offered by Silvertone and Harmony, the H63 Espanada was the poor-man's version of Gibson's ES-175.

- DAVE HUNTER

YEARS AGO, HARMONY and Silvertone guitars were mostly seen as low-level pawnshop prizes, funky junk or, at best, short-money noisemakers that might cut a dashing figure in garage bands or punkblues outfits. But the people who designed and manufactured those guitars took pride in creating the more elevated models that ended up in the hands of stars like Roy Smeck, Buck Owens, Elvis Presley, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James and Keith Richards.

Today, many guitarists now value those upmarket models as viable instruments that have a sound, vibe and look all their own. Moreover, they can help the player say something original onstage or in the studio, and do so with a sly sense of cool.

BUDGET JAZZ BOX

The Silvertone Model H63 Espanada featured here is just such a guitar. Designwise, this instrument isn't far off the template of Gibson's ES-175 model from a few years earlier, before the new PAF pickup arrived on the jazz box in the late '50s. In fact, this Silvertone carries a pair of Gibson-made single-coil pickups that aren't a mile away from the P90 formula, as well as a single-cutaway body with a pressed archtop made from laminated maple, a glued-in neck of maple (rather than mahogany), a floating rosewood bridge and other features that put it in the ballpark. The elevated looks are there, too, in the multi-ply body binding, single-ply fingerboard binding and pearloid block inlays.