Citation:
As a longtime owner of an original Harmony H22 I was excited to try one of the reissues at winter NAMM in Anaheim last month. My old H22 is one of my favorite basses with its amazing low action, flatwound thump, and the sick DeArmond beefy pickup that everyone loves.
The reissue H22 retails for nearly $1200 but is apparently on back order, it's so popular. I plugged it into the small practice guitar amp they had at the Harmony booth at NAMM and played it for a couple minutes. It was strung with roundwounds -- not what I'm interested in -- but the neck's playability was quite nice and the overall craftsmanship was sound. The reissue seemed to have an improvement near the bridge, under the chrome tailpiece: they've added a small piece of wood that the strings fit through that shores them up much better than they do on an original H22. (I've had my old one stuffed with foam and a small piece of wood under the endpiece to calm string vibration and increase string tension.) Tonewise it was pretty hard to tell how close the reissue came to the original -- not having flatwounds or a real bass amp makes for an unfair comparison.
Seems to me that reliability-wise the new ones may be a step up. They've got more solid tuning machines, a better string-through set up, and the neck is fully adjustable (just as the old ones are). Do they sound as good as the old ones? Probably not. But what you lose in old-school tone and vibe you might make up for in reliability and intonatability. I'm also a dedicated Jerry Jones fan and have always thought that those instruments' craftsmanship, style, and playability made up for any of their shortcomings in the vintage tone department.
Nothing beats the sound of old wood and parts in my opinion. But it would sure be nice to have a well-playing bass that closely approximates what's good about the old ones that you don't have to worry about taking on a plane or a bus for fear of its getting dropped and cracked.