After a long and protracted ordering/order disappearing/factory finally finishing/delivery saga, it's actually due to arrive some day soon. In these COVID times, with AusPost under the pump, I'm sure they're all pedaling as fast as they can!
Here's a pic of the real deal - I'm hoping that I'll be able to do it justice:
The reason for this build is that I haven't seen a Harmony H62 for sale in Australia in all the time I've been looking. I ended up buying a Silvertone 1385, which is basically the same guitar, but finished in a black gloss, which I really dig
also, but it's in amazing condition, and I don't want to gig with it, and wreck it, thus devaluing it. The basic specs of the GR1, make it sound like it will be a suitable base for this build to work, mainly the body shape/size, and the wide neck, which I need, to allow for the extra width of the polepieces on the Gibson P13 pickups. These pickups were the precursor to the P90, and were not used by Gibson, after the P90 came into production, but are pretty much the same design, with some construction differences. I assume the P90 was cheaper to produce, thus the P13s went by the wayside - well, not totally, as Harmony still used the pickups up until the early 1960s, but there's scant info on who continued to build them for Harmony.
I'll post some pics in the comments (as supplied by Ben) of the body supplied by the factory - I wanted flame back and front, and because the Gretsch style build they supply is not the same layout/pickup size, etc, I asked for only bridge post holes and f holes on the top. Now that I notice the f holes are in a bit of an odd position (pretty much all archtops have the bridge positioned central to the f holes), I may or may not live with this one as the f hole positions in relation to the bridge get to me....