I have had and have Kay and Harmony guitars.
Your guitar needs a bridge reglue and often a bridge plate patch.The only fix is to remove the bridge, lightly scrape off any lacquer, sand the bridge bottom to match the contour of the top, and reglue it. Do not use glue to fill the gaps or drive screws into the bridge to bring it back down.Many bridges are glued directly onto the lacquer which causes them to lift and raise the action.Some people will recommend shaving down the guitar bridge which is like putting a bandaid on a broken bone and damages the original bridge beyond repair.As string tension and climate shift the wood in a guitar, they inevitably need the neck to be steamed off and a new angle carved relative to the body.The strings are too high off the fretboard.Your guitar needs a fretboard planing and refret or more ideally a truss rod installation.Most Kay guitars lack adjustable truss rods and so forward bow cannot be easily repaired.The strings are buzzy or the neck is bowed.Frets are like tires on your car, they need replacing every so often.Your guitar needs a neck reset or a proper bolt-on conversion.Some folks put a screw through the heel to hold it in place.Do not shove glue in there, you won't do anything except make a later repair harder.The neck heel is pulling away from the body.Your guitar needs proper humidity and cleats.Do not try to fill the cracks with glue or put clamps on the guitar to press it together.This occurs when an instrument is exposed to a climate different than the ideal (70 degrees Fahrenheit and 45-50% humidity) and the wood has shrunk.
Find out what your instrument actually sells for, subtract the cost of repairs, and you should land around a fair price for your instrument.įeel free to Contact Me and I can provide information about your guitar's model and age is one of the greatest resources for finding what your guitar really sells for, I would highly recommend checking there and clicking the " Show Sold Listings" checkbox in the filter. People won't pay top market value for a project instrument. I often see people selling their Kay instruments for $300 as "wall hangers" or "slide guitars" which is a nice thought but ultimately like selling a wrecked automobile for $10,000 as a "lawn ornament".
The value of your instrument is directly related to the amount of work it needs.
The big question everybody asks is "How much is my Kay guitar worth?" and that is a fantastic question! It depends heavily on condition and playability since every Kay guitar is at least 50 years old and needs a good amount of work to get it back into playable shape. The mounting hardware that appears on the Zorzi neck That bolt is held in place by a wood screw driven through the heel of the instrument. A bolt protruding from the neck fits through a hole drilled in the neck block and is secured with a wing nut. The neck was carved to mate with the block and had a groove which could slide along the rail. The joint featured a radiused, dyed wood block with a raised center rail that was secured to the body of the instrument with three small nails. 'Zorzi' adjustable neck joint on a 1930s Kay Deluxe The Zorzi neck joint disappeared, along with the Kay Kraft line, at the end of the 1930s. It was intended to prevent against costly neck reset operations by allowing the user to easily adjust the angle of the neck to the body. But you can also find them on other 30s lines like the Kay Deluxe. It first appeared in 1932 with the line of Kay Kraft instruments that it is best associated with. The Zorzi adjustable neck joint was invented by Joseph Zorzi who was hired at Stromberg-Voisenet in either 1926 or 1927.