1930s Kay DeLuxe Schireson-Cone Resonator Guitar (Update)

This is a cool old Kay resonator guitar that's clearly a re-use of a National El Trovador body style (Kay made the bodies/necks of said model for the firm) but kitted-out with an off-brand Schireson-made resonator cone rather than a National-style cone. Some folks think these were made after National stopped making the El Trovador model but I think they were made concurrently with the Nationals and then also after. I've seen variations on this basic design over and over as examples pop-up online.

I worked on this guitar last year and sold it to a fella who was interested in it as a bottleneck-style instrument, as far as I knew. That suited the fact that it had a fairly good warp in the neck at the time I sold it. He then sold it on and the new owner, after using it for a bit, decided it wasn't for him. He then sent it back up here for resale. I had to open the guitar up to repair a couple of soundposts that had fallen-out in transit and were rattling around, so I decided to go ahead and do more work on the instrument to get it to be a better player.

This time around I yanked the frets from the chip-prone, ebonized-maple fretboard (these always make a huge mess), leveled the board as much as I could stand it, refretted with jumbo frets, and then took off any minor discrepancies in the straightness of the neck off the top of the new frets. This has turned it into a much more fulfilling player and the advantages of playing this finger-style in lowered tunings present themselves immediately.

These guitars have long scale lengths (25 3/4" on this guy but often 25 7/8") and unreinforced necks so string gauges still need to be kept light. I have this strung 52w-11 but detuned a whole step from standard pitch to keep the neck happy. Strung with 46w-10 it would have no issue tuned right up to E-to-E standard, but the warmth and woodiness of the cone's sound suggest down-tuning to me.

Repairs included: previously a neck reset, now a board plane and refret, saddle adjustments, soundpost reglues, cleaning, setup.

Weight: 5 lbs 1 oz

Scale length: 25 3/4"

Nut width: 1 3/4"

Neck shape: medium soft V

Board radius: flat

Body width: 14 1/2"

Body depth: 3 7/8"

Body: wood (ply mahogany)

Cone type: Schireson single-cone

Bridge: tall biscuit/poplar?

Fretboard: ebonized maple (very chip-prone)

Neck wood: mahogany

Action height at 12th fret: 3/32” bass 1/16” treble (fast, spot-on)
String gauges: 50w-11

Truss rod: none

Neck relief: hair of relief tuned to pitch

Fret style: jumbo

Condition notes: it has a bunch of chip-out in the binding all over the body that I've patched here and there and then touched-up with similar paint. The fretboard itself, post-refret, has some chip-out that I just let slide. This material (ebonized maple from the '30s) is famously-annoying to work with and it was chipping-out from pressing the frets in. Thus, around many of the frets, there's a bit of ick in the board. It's all stable, but it's not the nicest to look at. It's in keeping with the state of the guitar, however, which has plenty of small scratches and minor nicks and dings throughout its finish. All hardware and parts, however, are original to the instrument.

It comes with: an older hard case.

Here's a pic of the cone setup:

Here are a few interior pics from opening it up recently