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N(WTFHIBTF)BD Kay KJP-1B


Maude

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30 minutes ago, hooky_lowdown said:

The Asian owned Kay brand relaunched in late 1969. The original Kay brand was American.

Oh yeah, these are definitely made from the finest Taiwanese shonkywood. 

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2 hours ago, Maude said:

I've been looking at the neck and can't decide if it's ply or not.

I’d say that’s not ply , but they have laminated the timber to get the width for the headstock, if it was ply you would see the lines on the curve of the neck .

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36 minutes ago, Pea Turgh said:

Nah, look at the heel - it’s just not very apparent on the rest of the neck.  The laminates run through the entire neck.

This is what I think, but it's very well blended together on the main run of the neck. Also there's ply and there's ply, this isn't going to be shuttering ply for a bit concreting. But as @Reggaebasssays, you can't see it on the shoulders of the head or heel end where you'd think it should be blindingly obvious. Either way, as I said earlier, it's still stable and straight after nearly half a century so it'll probably be alright for another couple of years. 

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Blimey, this has moved on!

Interesting to see the neck stamps & the 69 being a date is persuasive up to a point, considering the era of the bass. However, I mentioned having had a few Taiwanese Kays, and I do still have the Strat copy, in bits. It's a K-32, and these are cosmetically accurate copies. The heel stamp's just about legible, where it matters:

279188389_KayStratHeelStamprs.thumb.jpg.c740e6248668cc6c426d34d90981fdb8.jpg

So, 67, or at a push 87 or G7. Either way, it's not a date. In 1967 absolutely nothing that looked as much like a Strat as this was made outside of Fullerton, and by '87 Kay had pretty much disappeared, manfacture having moved from Taiwan to Cort in Korea in the mid/late 70s.

Regarding the neck construction, it's definitely ply (or strip mahogany, as the more sniffy MIJ geeks insist) and apart from the K-30 LP copy, all the Taiwanese Kays I've seen have this neck construction. This was a common build technique on 60s MIJ guitars, as much because it was cheap, as because it was stiffer & more resistant to warping than the poorly-seasoned woods used on earlier guitars. It was probably adopted in the Taiwanese factory for the same reason.

Interesting that a lot of mahogany's used in these Kays - the Strat, P and LP copies all have solid pancake mahogany bodies, I assume because it's what was locally available.

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I am enjoying this. The most important observation - 

On 01/03/2020 at 23:19, Maude said:

Either way, as I said earlier, it's still stable and straight after nearly half a century so it'll probably be alright for another couple of years. 

 

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My first electric guitar was this KT-2 bought second hand in 1980 (about the time Running Free came out...)

It has the same PUPS and I can confirm that they are microphonic (well they would be, the coils just lie loose in the pickup body). It actually sounds pretty 'vintage' and feeds back like a monster... (I fitted the tailpiece and tune-a-matic to replace the plain bar bridge and sub-sub-bigsby trem. And knobs and switches)

1804437628_K-2T(3).thumb.JPG.ddaba48ff57579e4cf18ac5f3098961d.JPG

K-2T.thumb.jpg.a149b577751f5217415c3e6f6b9e977b.jpg

1158063553_K-2T(2).thumb.JPG.8659f236fd98a84ca494c4d3507ee7e8.JPG

Edited by Stub Mandrel
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1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

My first electric guitar was this KT-2 bought second hand in 1980 (about the time Running Free came out...)

It has the same PUPS and I can confirm that they are microphonic (well they would be, the coils just lie loose in the pickup body). It actually sounds pretty 'vintage' and feeds back like a monster... (I fitted the tailpiece and tune-a-matic to replace the plain bar bridge and sub-sub-bigsby trem. And knobs and switches)

1804437628_K-2T(3).thumb.JPG.ddaba48ff57579e4cf18ac5f3098961d.JPG

K-2T.thumb.jpg.a149b577751f5217415c3e6f6b9e977b.jpg

1158063553_K-2T(2).thumb.JPG.8659f236fd98a84ca494c4d3507ee7e8.JPG

Cor look at that beauty, isn't she erm....... er......... well....... oh would you look at that, someone's at the door, gotta go! 

😁

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Well, all the nicks, dinks and chips were sorted and I'd got it primed yesterday, so it would've been plain rude not to stick it in the booth today and give it the first layer of what should be a fittingly disgusting colour scheme. No pictures yet as it's air drying overnight, I've made the mistake of baking a plywood body before, it pops air out everywhere from the layers and cause little bubbles in the finish around the edges. As long as it's hard enough to mask onto I will hopefully get the second colour on tomorrow. 

On the microphonic pickup front, I'm not sure it is. It's quiet without excessive noise from body handling. Tapping or talking into the pickup doesn't really do anything and the only thing that makes a sound of any significant level is plucking or tapping a string. The coil certainly isn't just rattling around inside the housing. 

Edited by Maude
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This is the first colour I've gone for. It's a 70s Vauxhall colour I've always loved called 'Columbian Brown' (readily available from all branches of Escobar department stores) with an extra bit of pearl gold thrown in to get more copper tones from it.

I'm doing the front of the body and headstock in this brown/Copper and the back of the body, headstock and neck in a deep cream colour reminiscent of those 70s plastic Bontempi organs with the fan inside. It'll have a black demarcation line between the two colours. 

If it looks like I envisage it should look like a slightly classier version of terrible 70s plastic tat. 🙂

 

It's quite hard to photograph the correct colour as the pearl gold changes it from deep chocolate brown to a bright copper but here's an attempt. Also this isn't the finished paint, it's had no polishing, once the cream and the black line are done it'll all have another two or three coats of lacquer to lose the join lines between colours. 

20200307_092838.thumb.jpg.fbea9ae75fcce0b329a7d244f18b831a.jpg

20200307_092610.thumb.jpg.3773743500ea4f38f2712efc8fb66d5f.jpg

 

Edited by Maude
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5 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

But yes, does look good and hide a multitude of sins

I'm going to design some t-shirts with the slogan 'Plywood Is Not A Sin!' 

I like to think of it as a scruffy little street urchin who's grown up and turning his life around. 😁

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

A little update on this as it all went a bit quiet for a while due to one thing or another. 

I've painted the back of the body, neck and headstock in terrible beige colour, reminiscent of the cheap plastic stuff was made of in the seventies, think those Bontempi fan organs that were red and cream. 

20200401_220348.thumb.jpg.4bdd5e72d021df093e32345d314d1734.jpg

I got a bit productive today and got three projects back on track, all basses and none made of real wood. I put the Kay waterslide logo on the headstock and lacquered it in then flatted that back, along with the body which after applying a black demarcation line will all be lacquered tomorrow, hopefully. 

The headstock still needs the black line applying. 

 

20200401_220434.thumb.jpg.01658066970c3c1ad0d7375ae00a5d0a.jpg

After applying the black line to the body I had a strange urge for some licorice allsorts. 😉

These are the three 'non-woods' ready for lacquering tomorrow, the Kay, a ply bodied Hohner Arbor Series fretless and a Dano Longhorn, made out of kitchen worktops or something. 20200401_220647.thumb.jpg.c5b1743531831f7fa6c79d7995604ce6.jpg😆

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