I am hoping someone can help me date a Harlin Bros Multi Kord.
I cannot find any information or reference material as to manufacture dates for the Multi Kord.
There seems to be a variety of models and color combinations.
Specifically, I am hoping someone can help me date the Multi Kord in the attached photo.
Judging from the tone & volume controls, the little red wah wah button between them, and the pickup cover, I can only guess mid to late 50's.
Harlin's did a lot of design experimenting back then.
Yet in the early 50's they had already come out with the mother of pearl finishes on most of their Multi-Kords. It's funny I was in their store almost every week from 1948 until 1954 and never saw one with a body like the one pictured until years after I was long gone from the Indianapolis area.
In the late 40's on their production models they had enameled all aluminum bodies and lids on each end, and no pickup covers.
Tom Pickett of Pickett's music Center in Columbus, Indiana may be of some more help here. You can find that store online.
Well , Danny you would have quite a bit of info on these guitars , being around there so much , Eddie , I would say that "a short time" , would be from the 30's to the mid 80's . BTW, they also had the 1st modern changer for a steel. Copied by several bigger co's . (and they are not in the :hall of fame?") . Several hundred courses out for their students .... on & on . Probably that steel is from the 70"s JF
I am guessing that the Harlin steel is around a 1957 to 58. That splatter paint job was used on about everything from house trailer walls to kitchen cabinets during those years. It was "the new thing". I had a couple of those guitars and stripped the paint to find pressed wood bodies. I have a double six string harlin that is solid maple with a tone to kill for....and a single 8 string that is "Mother of toilet seat" covering. It is a solidly built guitar and I have found many tunings that work on it's 5 pedal.....push pull changing system. Each and every string can be set for a single note push or pull and they do make a two tone registry change on each string. The tuning stay locked solid and it make no difference whether you have the cable pulls to the pedals or have them converted to rods., it holds solid tuning just the same. If one stands on the cables, they break.
Harlin was making pedal steels before the Gibson company came out with theirs. ( 1937 -38 )Harlin sued Gibson for patent infringement and got a good settlement for it and Gibson quit the pedal steel business. Then came the Sho-Buds and the rest is history.
