1970s Kay KE-20 (Taiwan-made) electric guitar

Well, this thing looks like a late-'60s Japanese guitar made by Kawai/Teisco. Surprise, though! It's made in Taiwan and seems use leftover Japanese parts and tooling in its construction. Globalization marches ever onward!

It's not a bad guitar for a cheap student instrument, though. It has a full, Gibson-style 24 3/4" scale length and a '50s-style medium-C neck profile that's comfortable enough, for sure. All of its "bad" was in the electronics (unusable as they age) and setup. The latter got ameliorated via a fret level/dress, extra compensation at the bridge, and a good setup. The former was dealt-with by a yank-out and replacement of the whole wiring harness.

Someone replaced the (obviously terrible) original tuners with random Jackson ones at some point, which was a good move, too. When I swapped the harness out I removed the slider-switch engagement for the pickups and simply put in a 3-way and nixed the tone control. Now there's a weird little man hiding behind the slider switch slots instead.

I had to stick with 9s as far as strings go because the truss rod was at the end of its limit and the neck was a little squirrely. It's better to be safe than... warped.

Sound is... bright... metallic... maybe the perfect cheesy surfy rhythm guitar? So funny... I didn't hit it with a fuzz box in the clip but that's where it's at, my friends.