1940s Kay-Made Lefty Conversion Archtop Guitar

I'd worked on this old Kay archtop for a customer many, many moons ago. At the time I'd just gotten it going "good enough" for him to play it. He brought it back in for sale a while back but, as it was low priority, it was hanging-out upstairs awaiting refit when time allowed. It really needed a neck reset and proper bridge to play the way I wanted it to.

Anyhow, just recently, a lefty player was in looking for an inexpensive archtop. He tried some of the spiffy ones out on the floor and then we dug through the piles of them upstairs to see if any would suit. He liked the vibe of this one and so over last weekend I got it working "as it should" and converted it to lefty for him. I was really happy with the result, of course!

Interesting notes -- the bridge top I added to it is from a '60s Kay as the original was damaged. The pickguard originally had white paint on its rear so to "reverse" the original pickguard I had to scrape the stuff all off. Translucent is a nice look though, I think, even if there's wear-and-tear from the scraping job. Lastly, this has '41-era tuner covers that must have just been hanging-around the factory as this guitar appears to be made postwar judging by its features and the late '40s/early '50s-style Waverly tuners that are under them.