Kay Vanguard

finish appears to be lacquer over a brown sunburst color scheme, the body style is a sort of cutaway,the tuners are 3 on a plate, a single chrome pickup,scale length about the same as a Strat, a wooden bridge adjustable for height, a chrome tailpiece cover, one-piece body, one-piece neck, one volume and one tone pot, input jack on bottom surface of pickguard.Not much featurewise, but the pickup makes this one rate an 8.

This guitar sounds like no other that I've played. The pickup position would be like between the middle and neck pickup on a Strat, but closer to the middle. This gives a nice warm round tone with the tone turned down, with the tone up it gets brighter of course, but not too trebly. I've been playing it through a Ross distortion box, a Holy Grail reverb into a silverface champ with a Weber ceramic speaker. It sounds great through my Laney LC-30, also. The tailpiece isn't grounded, but I'm going to run a small solid copper wire to the input jack someday. Right now it could use a fret job..someone ran a coarse file across some of the frets. If I can't get brass frets, then I'll have it done with nickel-silver. But it will be worth it, because I intend to play it. It does old blues better than my other guitars.

When I got this Kay it was dirty, dusty, etc. I wiped it down with a damp cloth, the next day I cleaned the fretboard and frets with 0000 steel wool, cleaned, lubricated and tightened the tuners while they were removed, tightened the truss rod and put new strings on. There were spots on the finish where a rubber coiled guitar cable apparently had rested, causing the lacquer to melt. Other than that, the finish is in very good condition for a 46 or so year old guitar. I made sure to check for loose screws, there were a few on the tuners. The strings line up perfectly on the fretboard. The bridge cannot be intonated, since it's one-piece, but I think once I have it professionally set-up and the action is lowered a bit more I think it will be fine.

I believe this guitar would stand up to live playing, there's a guy here in Saint Louis who use old Kays, Harmonys, Silvertones etc. in his band.The finish seems to be thin, but may be why this guitar resonates so well. It sounds bright unplugged, but can sound very deep plugged in. I would probably not play without a backup for any guitar if my livelihood depended on it.

I don't think it's under warranty...

Been playing for about 24 years. I have two Strats, an Epiphone Les Paul, Fender Musicmaster bass,two acoustics, Laney LC-30, Fender Champ, Ross Distortion, Thomas crybaby and other assorted effects.What I love most is the warm bluesy pickup plus the cool factor. I saw an ad for one in an online vintage Kay catalog from about 1961. I found this one on Ebay and had to have it, I'm glad I got it.