1960s Kay Tenor Guitar Rubber-Bridge Mini-Bass Conversion

This is another tenor guitar to rubber-bridge mini-bass conversion for the Benny tribe. Having built so many of them, the concept is now getting refined a bit. This guitar is a '60s Kay tenor -- a model that's pretty hard to find, actually -- in a cool, burgundy finish.

It features a Duncan Cool Rails pickup in the neck position and a K&K acoustic pickup glued-up under the bridge. There's volume and tone controls for the magnetic pickup and a volume control for the acoustic. To get the rubber to work with the current bridge mixed with the tailpiece setup, I reset the necks just a hair more than I normally would.

I'm also using a "new" tailpiece idea -- I've used different tailpieces but the trick is getting one that allows the maximum string afterlength so that regular (long scale) bass strings can be used (so you have lots of options when stringing). I used an aluminum Hipshot 5-string bass "string tree" as the tailpiece on this one (and the last two, actually), with a ground wire mounted under it. I think it's a nice, elegant solution to the problem. My favorite alternate tailpiece before this was using cast-off Strat "trem claws" from my parts-bins.