really cool idea. I'm going to do the exact thing on an old Kay. It doesn't have a true rod, and I was going to attempt doing neck reset myself (which I never done before) or just resign to dropping it to open g and use it as a lap steel. Brilliant! You made my day. Thanks
This reminds me of my first guitar I got when I was 11 years old in 1962. It was a Kay wide body arch top like the one you worked on except it was sunburst, had a stamped metal Kay logo on the headstock, and had a single pickup. My grandmother saved up 17 3/4 books of S&H green stamps and it took a year to save them up to purchase the guitar. I took it to the local music store to take my first lesson and the teacher called it a piece of crap and totally unplayable. I could play only open chords and used it for a year then bought a 1950's Fender Esquire for $35 from a kids uncle who never used it.
Great work. Big fan of your work. Like the others, would have loved to hear what this baby sounded like. Thank you for sharing your talent and skills brother!
7/64 inch (2.77mm) is a pretty decent action height on an old archtop. I reckon this old Kay has a steel reinforcement rod inside the neck. Some folk reckon you get a better response on an archtop by having the strings a bit higher to get the volume. Anyway, Dave has given the old girl some TLC and given the old box his seal of approval. Kay guitars and brass frets go together like bread and butter. Ernest needs to find a nice pickguard then he won't need to bother Dave about that minute blemish.
Hey Dave, beautiful piece of wood you got there!...Too bad there is no demo coming with it...again! I would have really liked to hear what tones it produces... Anyway, any idea about the age of this guitar? And how a neck without truss rod stays straight under the tension of 13 gauge strings? Thanks for the up, keep'em coming!
+radducku ; Kay made some half decent archtops back in their heyday out of Chicago. In those days (when I wore a younger mans clothes and worked for a guitar teacher/store, I went on a semi-sales journey to Chicago to visit Harmony and Kay and of course Gibson/Epiphone in Kalamazoo. Unfortunately for me, Gibson was on strike at the time of my visit , so they wouldn't let me in..this was 1966.
after seeing this video last night i ended up doing the same to my old silvertone archtop today. the saddle wouldn't go any lower and after removing those adjusters it made a guitar previously unplayable a manageable instrument, though it still requires a heavier touch.
Wait'll you see the one I have with no trussrod;-) Looks like someone took a 2x4, shaped an entire neck out of it, and barely rounded over the edges. Its a hilarious hollow body . The bridge is similar to this one and there is only one wrinkle...9 strings. Hybrid 6 string 12 string. Weirdest guitar I've ever seen. Though the neck comes off, so...maybe we have a chance of making it play.
Thats a very pretty guitar, must have been halfway looked after. a lot i have seen were as Dave would say Gooched, with the tops and sides cracked from neglect.
that looks like a fancy model, seeing as the f-holds had bindings. You said it had no truss rod - did you just mean no adjustable truss rod? It might have had a stiffener down the neck. I was interested to see that black stripe down the neck - potentially an ebony piece between two maple pieces? Ebony would act as a stiffener. Anyways, seems like an old girl, maybe late 50's early 60's? Those fingerboard inlays appear to be an art-deco design. Cool stuff, cheers!
I am more into the electrics but that is a thing of beauty right there. The headstock paint work is very fine. It's interesting that you are working on stuff for a tv show. Being a graphic artist myself I am curious about the nature of the work you do. Anything you can tell us?
Dave, I would dig your opinion on this if you can spare the time: Is it ok to crown flat frets on a vintage archtop or do you think for some instruments it's a design/maintenance choice rather than poor fretwork to have frets flat like that? I own a vintage 1979 ibanez howard roberts that just came from far away and it has frets in good condition, just not crowned nicely, they are pretty flat for my taste but it seems that flat frets give it a bit more of that old acoustic type of sound compared to a more smooth modern one, at least compared to my 2008 Tokai es175 copy. Would you yourself crown the frets in such a case or just polish them and leave it as they are if they are level? Is it possible that someone wanted them flat like that on purpose? In theory, if someone came to you and gave you a flat fret fretboard to level and recrown would it be better than if someone came to you for the same job but with the frets already crowned? I don’t have the tools to level the fertboard but It seems like it won’t need it for now so I just want to be sure that if I crown everything with my diamond fret file (yeah you know where it came from, had no choice) it will still be as easy for someone smarter to level it all at a later date in case it develops issues at a later date. Thinking of giving the metal tailpiece some new life with Nevrdull too - should I give it a go with high grit sand paper to remove the oxidation first or just go straight for nevrdull? If sanding first then what grit would you start at? It’s in good condition, just all matte so I want it to be smooth and shiny instead, I think it might have been gold at some point but that is all gone for sure.
Hi Dave, new to your vids but I love 'em already. What was the rectangular tool you used to isolate the fret wires from the fingerboard while cleaning? Is it made specifically for stringed instruments? It's a small stroke of genius compared to taping off the frets.
Kluson Deluxe tuners on a Kay. This has to be one of their deluxe models judging by the unique position markers and 3 piece flamed maple laminated neck. Kay made some decent archtops in the 60s, before all these custome luthiers came along , and a few musicians used them over Gibson, although some of the Kay custom models were not that much cheaper than some Gibson archtops of that era (barring the Gibson L5 archtop acoustic of course) which was priced much higher. Any idea of the "circa" of this one? Looks like a "custom" 1960s vintage model .
Hey Dave, why didn't you just remove a thickness each side the saddle with a fret saw blade for the adjuster wheels to recess into? -- I did it on both my archtops - only takes 5-10 mins. : /
Do you have a process for taking care of a bowed neck with no truss rod? I've been trying for almost a year now to give my hofner a back bow so that it sits straight under the string tension but I can't find a way that will stick. (took it to a luthier that came highly recommended and basically all he told me was that there was no way to fix it, and I refuse to believe there's nothing that can be done)
Dave what is the tool on the right at 6.41 the long thin thing, I used to have one like that didn't know what it was for. could you talk about that in a new video. thx jon
