1960s Kay K672 Swingmaster Hollowbody Electric Guitar

It's rare that a nice old Kay comes in the shop as clean as this one. Everything is original (save strap buttons) and it only needed a mild wipe-down to clean-up. I gave it a "glorified setup" and it's now playing quick and, due to those excellent Kleenex Box pickups, has a mids-forward, pushy, grumbly blues tone that hits the spot every time. Like a lot of these, the center position on the 3-way appears to be out of phase and so you get "sauce" in the neck or bridge positions and a perfect "sucked chord-strum" sound in the middle that lets you ape an acoustic, in a way.

It's lightweight and the retro, single-cutaway look with its checker binding and big batwing pickguard is just about perfect. These have a long scale and so 10s feel nice and snappy like a Fender. The pickups are similar to P90s in the way they hit an amp but a little "looser" in sound, and so you get a nice, gnarly garage-band mess when you hit them with a bunch of gain. It's that classic "radial airplane engine" drive that I love.

I think this one is an early-'60s version -- 1962 or 1963 -- as it's got the nicer tuners and older features.

Repairs included: a fret level/dress, cleaning, spray-out of the controls, bridge compensation for 3-wound, 3-plain stringing, setup.

Weight: 6 lbs 0 oz

Scale length: 25 3/4"

Nut width: 1 11/16"

Neck shape: medium C/D

Board radius: 10"

Body width: 15 1/8"

Body depth: 2"

Body wood: ply maple

Bridge: Brazilian rosewood adjustable

Fretboard: Brazilian rosewood

Neck wood: maple

Pickups: 2x single coil "Kleenex Box" originals

Action height at 12th fret: 1/16” overall (fast, spot-on)
String gauges: 46w-10

Truss rod: adjustable

Neck relief: straight w/hair of upbow at the joint

Fret style: lower/wider

Condition notes: it's quite clean and all-original throughout except for the endpin (period replacement) and a strap button I added near the neck joint. There's average usewear throughout the body but it's very light overall. It was cared-for! The neck has a hair of "ski jump" where it meets the body -- typical Fender-style, bolt-on aging -- and so I leveled the frets lower in that area to deal with it. If you're a player who really digs-in hard with their pick or fingers and you're keeping the action low, you may get a hair of zip to your notes of light fret chatter in the frets over the body -- but as you can hear in the clip, I'm no light touch and it was no issue for me.

It comes with: its original two-tone chip case in OK shape.

Consignor tag: JW