An Improbable Restoration Project Reinvigorated This Fantastic Vintage Acoustic-Electric
Few might invest in an old Kay as deeply as our columnist, but, in his case, it paid off.
When I was in my early days of researching guitar history, I embraced all sorts of guitars from all over the place, from kitchen countertop guitars to cheap rusty resonator jobs. I really had no focus whatsoever. Every topic, as it related to guitars, was rather fascinating. Eventually, though, I moved towards crazy electrics and away from folksy acoustics. I wanted loud, interesting, and rare, and in my eyes acoustic guitars were all sort of the same. I know, I know … they aren’t the same at all. But in the 1960s, acoustic guitars were copies of copies, and they just never really held my interest. For this month, when I was tasked to write about an acoustic guitar, the choice was easy since I only own one.
My acoustic guitar is an early 1960s Kay model that has seen its share of wear and fixed cracks. Based on the size, it’s most likely the Kay Plains Special, with mahogany sides and a solid spruce top. When I first saw this worn-out old boy with the art deco headstock, I could tell someone really loved it. The neck has a lovely deep-V shape, and even though the guitar was in disrepair, I wanted to give it a second chance. So, off it went to a few different techs who gave it a refretting (Kay used some pretty bad frets), crack repairs on the top, a neck reset, and a reglued bridge.
I suppose most folks wouldn’t want to put that kind of money into a cheap guitar, but, in my eyes, it’s like recycling. The Kay Musical Instrument Company was one of two Chicago-based manufacturing behemoths, along with Harmony. (Valco, the other notable Windy City-based instrument maker, merged with Kay in 1967.) Both companies specialized in interesting fare, often geared towards beginners and intermediate players. I love so many of the old Kay and Harmony guitars.
Vintage Kay Acoustic Demo with DeArmond Model 210 Pickup
Hear guitarist Mike Dugan slide and strum on the author’s Kay/DeArmond combination.
With this acoustic, I knew what I needed to add, and that came from Toledo, Ohio. I’ve often mentioned that I grew up and live near the Martin Guitar Factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. When I was a kid, I took my first guitar lessons at a little music shop called the Nazareth Music Center (and it’s still open for business). Throughout the ’80s, as my love affair with guitars began to grow, I frequented the quaint little shop that was a converted two-story home. The waiting room was the old kitchen and the lesson rooms were in the basement. On the first floor was a counter on the left and some instruments for sale on the right … kind of like a sitting room. I wish I could travel back in time because that store, back then, had amassed all sorts of inventory from several decades of business. One item that always held my interest were the blue and white boxes of DeArmond pickups that were still new in the package. These were the early days of my interest in “hot-rodding” guitars and mixing and matching parts, so I ended up buying a few of these old pickups.
The DeArmond Company was started in Toledo by Harry DeArmond and, since the mid-1930s, they specialized in guitar pickups that could be attached to acoustic and archtop guitars. They definitely filled a need, since electric guitar popularity was just around the bend. The company made all sorts of crazy pickups and almost all of them sound amazing.
My favorite of the old DeArmond pickups is the model 210, which always seemed to be the most powerful sounding to my ears. Plus, this pickup is fully adjustable via the threads on the polepieces. There’s a whole laundry list of professionals who’ve used the DeArmond 210, and I can understand why—it just has that vintage sound built right in. (Of course, back then, that sound was contemporary!) I use this pickup with my old Kay as a slide player with open tunings.
There’s a lesson here for all you acoustic players that shun the new and fancy and innovative. Take an old American-made acoustic and an old American-made pickup, and you really have something.
Watch Gruhn Guitars' in-house guru David Kriesel walk you step-by-step through the process of making your flattop amp- and DI-friendly.
[Updated 8/3/21]
The soundboard will always reign in tonal importance, but the size and materials of a flattop’s bridge and bridge plate are also critical.
It’s no secret that the soundboard is the key element for quality tone on an acoustic instrument. However, components attached to the soundboard, such as bridge material, bridge-plate material, and brace stock, will enhance or dampen an instrument’s performance as well. Through the balance of these secondary components, luthiers control the instrument’s voice. So it stands to reason that these items must also be of the highest quality and used correctly for the best possible outcome.
In the coupled system of an acoustic guitar top, the ratio of weight to strength is the result of the combined collaboration of all of its parts. For the style of sound a luthier is shooting for, there is an ideal balance for desired tone and response. The weight or strength is going to be either in the top or the braces, and borne in the bridge or bridge plate.
Let’s say the maker wants to use X-braces and scallop them to recreate a classic, vintage tone. Luthiers have to select an appropriate soundboard to collaborate with the scalloping process—the same goes for other bracing patterns and voicing styles—so they can mold the instrument’s tone for different players to achieve their ideal sound.
Early nylon-string instruments had thinner tops and lighter bracing, since they could accommodate the lower tension of nylon strings. These instruments used a pinless bridge, and their bridge plates were most commonly made of spruce and were fairly small. Once higher-tension steel strings were introduced, this meant soundboards had to be thicker, bracing had to be beefed up, and bracing patterns moved from fan bracing to the modern-X style. Additionally, bridge-plate materials shifted to harder woods, such as maple or rosewood, to accommodate the pinned-style bridges that anchor the ball ends to the bridge plate (Photo 1).
Somewhere between 1920 and 1945, steel string guitar makers hit their ideal stride by balancing top thickness, brace voicing, the bridge, and bridge-plate size to form the tone of some of the world’s most iconic instruments. By the early 1960s, the popularity of steel-string guitars grew exponentially due to the folk-music boom. In an attempt to keep up with the high demand, however, material quality was compromised as manufacturers started using weaker, heavier tops.
Soundboard failures soon followed, so bracing and bridge-plate sizes were then increased in an attempt to stabilize the lower-quality soundboards. But because the overall weight of the tops increased and stiffness decreased, these moves compromised the instruments’ stability and lowered the quality of the tone and response.
Bridge-plate sizes, for example, shifted from small, vintage-style footprints and thinner profiles to a footprint that was twice the size and double the thickness. By the 1970s, some makers moved to plywood bridge plates in an attempt to remedy some instruments’ structural issues. Unfortunately, the addition of a large, thick bridge plate to make up for poor material choices was an ill-advised move. It only dampened the instruments’ performance as they continued to routinely fail.
Photo 2
When tuned to pitch and operating correctly, a bridge pin’s job is to hold the ball end in place under the bridge plate. When it’s not operating correctly, the ball end is allowed to sink into the bridge plate (Photo 2), which will distort the bridge pin and cause a number of woes, such as tuning issues and tonal distortion. Not surprisingly, when lower-quality bridge-plate materials were introduced, we started seeing an increase in this type of failure, which eventually needs repair or replacement. It’s a very advanced repair, and if not performed correctly it can severely damage a guitar’s soundboard.
Fortunately, our industry has revisited the quality craftsmanship that produced those iconic vintage guitars, spearheaded in part by luthiers such as Bill Collings, who practiced time-tested building approaches using quality materials. This allows luthiers to once again focus on smaller, lighter components that significantly increase an instrument’s response, as they are significantly better positioned to withstand string tension and humidity fluctuations. From a repairperson’s standpoint, focusing on the maintenance of high-quality, great-sounding guitars is much more rewarding work than major restorations to stabilize failing instruments.