Old Kay acoustic guitar value?

Stinsok · Jan 11, 2005

I was cruising a flea market yesterday and saw an old Kay acoustic guitar. It looked similar to a Silvertone I had as a kid. The neck was held on by 3 screws. The headstock read "steel reinforced neck", but I didn't see any truss rod adjustment. Considering it's age, it looked pretty decent. They were asking 45.00 for it. Would anyone know if these had any collector value?

The Golden Boy · Jan 11, 2005

Not really worth more than the $45. You can get a lot better playing and sounding guitars for that price.

Harmony and Danelectro made guitars for all those midwest guitar makers in the 40s-60s.

Before Nathan Daniel started the Danelectro company in 1947, he made amplifiers for Epiphone from 1934 to 1946. Epiphone wanted Daniel to make amps for them exclusively, but he preferred to stay independent. Instead he founded the Danelectro company in 1947 and started making amplifiers for Montgomery Ward. By 1948 Daniel expanded and became the exclusive guitar amplifier producer for Sears & Roebuck. At the same time he was also supplying other jobbers such as Targ & Dinner of Chicago.
In the fall of 1954, Daniel started production of solidbody guitars for Sears, under the Silvertone name. He also produced the same guitars under the Danelectro name, sold to other jobbers. These early models didn't have truss rods but had a 3/4" square aluminum tube beginning at the peghead and through the body to the bridge. The bodies were constructed of solid Poplar wood. The Silvertone models were covered with a dark maroon vinyl covering, while the Danelectro models were covered in a whitish tweed material. Both lines came with either 1 or 2 pickups, concealed under a baked melamine pickguard. Concentric stacked tone and volume knobs were used on the two pickup models only. Notably, when both pickups were used together, the tone was much stronger. This was due to wiring the pickups in series, instead of parallel like most other maker's two pickup guitars.
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Stinsok · Jan 11, 2005

This is one of those "plywoody" type guitars that I sure plays and sounds just awful.

The Golden Boy · Jan 11, 2005

I forgot to cite the source.

http://www.provide.net/~cfh/dano.html

If you've seen some Silvertones they look like Danelectros, some look like Harmonys. It's because they are Harmonys and Danelectros. I've seen a lot of Kays that look like Harmonys, but not Danelectros.

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