I saw this Kay KE-120 on ebay and thought it might be a nice addition to my mini collection of budget vintage guitars. It needs cleaning and TLC but for its 1970s age is still in reasonable shape and played ok on arrival.
It does have a few dings and scratches, and the fretboard has dryed up and cracked, and there’s a little crack near where the neck joins the body. But given the age of the guitar it’s in pretty decent shape. And though its a single pick up, it’s a nice light body. I tuned it, messed a little with the bridge height and it played ok. It’s probably one of my lightest body guitars, definitely lighter than my other solid bodies. Lol I hope it isn’t MDF when I look inside.
So this won’t be an upgrade or a repair, it’s really just a clean and perhaps renew with the fretboard needing most attention.
So strings off and strip off parts to clean them starting at the base. I start with the tail and give it a clean. When I take it off there is a wire probably coming from the output jack that is loose. Since the tail is the biggest bit of metal I guess the output jack is grounded on the tail but I will take the pickguard off and have a look at where all the wiring goes. If that wire is wanting a ground I will solder it to the tail rather than it just pressing against it.
So I got all the old screws off the body and started to clean and polish things. I tried to solder the ground wire to the tail but the solder won’t stick to the tail so I fell back on duct taping the wire to the tail to make contact. I put a multimeter on the pickup to see what kind of reading I would get. Not surprisingly it’s not a powerful pickup and the pots are tiny and old. However at this stage I don’t want to get into swapping out all the electrics. I want to stick to a low budget for this guitar, it’s more of a quirky collection item than one that is going to be one of my main guitars.
Unfortunately one of the pick guard screws was a little hard to get out and a result I cracked the plate.
After I re-assembled a wire to the output jack came loose. This is probably the wire that the seller mentioned was causing the jack to crackle a little. So I will solder that back on.
I’ve given most of the guitar a good clean and started to put some F-One oil on the fretboard in particular. As well as the small cracks, the veneer on one side was loose near the head so been busy with the super glue filling cracks and sticking the veneer back on.
Having worked a little on it, it’s definitely a supermarket budget guitar. It’s better than an Encore with some real wood but has the same sort of dinky little screws and electronics that you see on an Encore.
There were a few dings on the body so I did a little of dropping super glue in, sand papering then spraying gloss black paint on to make some of the worst dings less obvious.
And finally I added a Van Gogh Starry Night guitar strap to it, and there we are.
It’s not my best or favourite guitar but it’s now a reasonable member of my collection.
Total Project Cost
Kay KE-120 guitar from eBay £40
Postage £17
Van Gogh Starry Night Guitar Strap £14.95
Total Project Cost: £71.95
Robbie's Guitar Projects 