1950s Orpheum (Kay) Thin Twin Semihollow Electric Guitar

I love Thin Twins. This Orpheum-branded one is owned by a local player and is early-on in production as it lacks the odd Kay truss rod system. The cellulloid headstock veneer and pickguard are, as usual, superb and the styling -- '40s running headlong into the '50s -- is killer.

The unfortunate design problem with these is that their low neck angle from the factory means that as they age, they always need neck resets to play their best. This one came in with a replacement wiring harness and bridge and terrible Ping tuners. It also desperately needed a neck reset and the neck itself was warped and twisted a bit as well.

I reset the neck and then Ancel did a painstaking job planing the fretboard, replacing board binding, and refretting it. Between that and a level and dress of the frets and setup work, it's now a spot-on player.

These have a semihollow body build with long "tonebar" style supports running the length of the interior. It's a bit "Gretschy" in style, though the top and back on this are flat rather than arched. The pickups peeking out of the top are just the poles and not the whole thing -- underneath the surface there's a wide, P90-size coil wrapped around them. Despite that, output on these pickups is fairly low (even compared to something like a Danelectro) and so you need to crank your amp a bit.