1960s Kay K6130 "Calypso" 000 Flattop Guitar

A friend of mine sold this to me the other day, and as I was regluing some other bridges, I did this one up, too. It turned-out a fine player with an old-timey, mids-y, typically "Kay" voice. Their dreadnoughts are pretty similar.

This style of Kay was made in the mid-60s and sports a solid spruce top (x-braced) over laminate mahogany back and sides. It's roughly 000 in size but has a very long 25 3/4" scale length and big 1 15/16" nut width and accompanying big D-shaped neck profile. If you've played any old 60s classical guitars from Japan, you might be familiar with the feel.

There are no cracks but there's plenty of weather-check in the finish and average use wear.

My work on this one included a new bridge, new bone nut and saddle, a fret level/dress, and general setup. The strings are 50w-11s.

I also added side dots. The board is rosewood, bound, and has the usual big old brass Kay frets. The dots are faux-pearl.

The blue decal rosette is wild, huh? The binding is all 3-ply tortoise/white/black.

The new rosewood bridge is a huge improvement over the original, bolted-on, funky Kay bridge. A drop-in saddle also makes action adjustments easy.

The guitar is playing with 3/32" EA and tiny-hair-above 1/16" DGBE action at the 12th fret. The neck deflects just a tiny bit under tension -- which is bog-standard on 60s Kay and Harmony products with the non-adjustable-rod necks.

The mahogany looks pretty spiffy for an old Kay, huh?

The neck is poplar and has a steel rod in it.

I sunk (and covered) a screw/bolt into the heel and said "there's that." You can see it in the above pic as the discolored area.

If I'm not doing a neck reset, I don't trust the joint's future stability unless I do something -- and on a guitar of this caliber, a neck reset is really just not worth the time. It's stable and good to go.

There's the x-bracing -- just in case you didn't believe me. A lot of older Kays are strictly ladder-braced things.