Kent Unknown Semi-Hollow Body

I have no idea what model it is as it has no numbers or "made in" label anywhere. It is very similar the 823 Semi-Hollow reviewed here by BB, except it has only 2 pickups (Thanks to BB for your words). The only writing on the whole guitar is "Kent" written in MOP on the body and headstock, and in black on each of the pickups.

It's been very hard to find much info on Kent guitars. This is (probably) a Korean or Japanese made guitar. I got it new for Christmas in 1967. It is a semi-hollow body shaped like a Gibson Trini-Lopez with the lower cut-a-way a bit smaller than the top. Very nice sunburst finish. Spruce top. Beautiful tiger stripe flame maple back. Body is multi-ply bound. Neck and F-holes a single ply bound. Roller tune-o-matic type bridge with a "Kent" bigsby style wammie bar. I took off the wammie bar and added a couple of washers and made it a hard tail. It also had a "string muter" mounted on the bridge. It was a lever hooked to a rubber-topped bar just under the strings and in front of the bridge. You could hit the lever and the bar would come up and mute the strings. It was in my way when picking close to the bridge so I took it off. 2 white single coil pickups mounted on small, black rectangles. A tortise shell pickguard with a 3-position toggle for pickup selection (bridge only, both, neck only) and a small 2-position "bright" switch. 2 white top hat volume knobs and 2 vintage gold top hat tone knobs. It had your basic chrome plated covered tuners (I updated it with a set of Gotoh Gut machine heads). A great adjustable truss-rod maple neck, with a mahogony fret-board with MOP inlaid markers. It has 22 frets plus the infamous Zero fret(great for playing F or Bb barre cords) and is only 1.5 inches at the nut. This is an exceptional looking instrument. Very unique semi hollow. I played this guitar for many years and but as I got more guitars, it kinda got left behind. I think I'm going to upgrade to modern dual-coil pickups and start playing it again.

It has great tone, but the old single coils are noisy and feedback can be problem.

It has been so many years and had so many adjustments since it was new that I can't remember much about the factory setup. I don'remember and problems, but I think the guy at the music shop may have tweeked the setup. I have the action dialed-in just the way I like it.

This guitar has stood the test of time.