Kay Swingmaster Guitar & Univox Tube Amp 1960's (Grassi Custom Branded)

This is a beautiful vintage set. We are offering a Kay Swingmaster (K672) hollow body guitar and a lightweight Univox tube amp. Both guitar and amp are branded with the name Grassi.

The Guitar:
This Kay K672 Swingmaster is in great shape, very playable, and very hard to put down. It has some dings and scratches, as it should for an almost 60-year-old guitar! There is some cracking in the plastic in the pickups and bezels, and some shallow marks on the neck from guitar stands. The varnish is checked but not pealing, and still quite lustrous. The tailpiece shape in our opinion is the most attractive of all the various tailpieces found on Kay archtops. We tried to take as many photos as possible to show all the flaws and beauty. It comes with the original soft-shell case which is tattered around the edges but still serviceable.

Included, free of charge, is Mel Bay's Modern Guitar Method Grade1. Or are we asking $2,400 for Mel Bay's and including the guitar and amp for free. You decide. The Mel Bay's book came with the guitar so we think that it should stay with the guitar.  

- The tuners look to be the original Grovers and are in good condition.

- The neck is in line and the truss rod works.

- The action is fairly low with no buzzing frets. The original frets were thick enough to be freshly leveled and dressed so they look and play like new. There may be one dressing left in them before a re-fret is necessary. This guitar would play slightly better if the nut slots were filed down a little deeper, but we decided against doing this in case a new owner wants to re-fret it right away with stainless steel frets or something that requires the higher nut slots.

- The pickguard is new and just crying for some fresh scratches. We cut it out of .12-inch-thick sturdy hard plastic, more like the vintage pickguards than the reproductions. We tried to mimic the Barney Kessel shaped pickguard as we prefer the look.

- The knobs are brand new reproductions; they are the reflector radio type which are a pretty faithful remake of the vintage knobs.

- The volume and tone pots have been replaced, the old ones were shot, but we saved the vintage tone capacitors. The tone pots are open load, so they completely disconnect when turned all the way up allowing the pickups to be as open and bright as possible.

- The electronics have been reworked, the volume knobs are on top the tones on the bottom, the shielding on all wiring was improved, the volume controls are wired vintage Kay style, so the potentiometer input and output terminals are reversed from standard. This isolates the volume controls from each other so that both volume controls have to be turned all the way down to silence the guitar. This is different from conventional Les Paul wiring. The advantage may be better pickup mixing, the disadvantage is more hum when the guitar is turned down because the output impedance is at 250K or 500K (depending on selector switch position) and not ground. If you prefer the Les Paul style wiring, then the input and output leads need to be reversed on the volume pots meaning the wiper of the pots will go to the selector switch and the pickup to the outside terminal of the pot. This requires removing the wiring harness from the guitar by removing the bridge pickup and gently pulling the wiring harness through the bridge pickup hole. We can make this modification if you like.  
_____________________________________________________________________

The Amplifier:
The Amp is branded "Grassi" but the architecture and stamp on the tremolo footswitch plug suggests it is of Univox origin. It has a 12AX7 preamp tube, a 12AX7 phase inverter tube, two 6AQ5 output tubes and a single 6X4 tube probably for the tremolo. We cleaned this amp up a little but otherwise left it completely original as it is a fully working vintage unit. It sounds clean and has a sweet distortion when overdriven with a hot humbucker. Both preamp tubes are RCA, one output tube is RCA and the other one is Sylvania (probably should be replaced with a matched set of your preference.) We would also suggest replacing the ungrounded power cord with a grounded one if this amp is to be used regularly. The photos show the few dings and rough edges but otherwise this amp is in great shape. It comes complete with original sun faded cover.

This amp tilts toward bass when the tone knob is centered. If we were to keep it for ourselves, we would probably reduce the value of the .02uf isolation capacitor going from the preamp tube output to the volume knob input to tilt it brighter when the tone knob is centered. Another capacitor can be wired in series with the original to reduce the overall value; then if you want to restore the amp back to original you still have the vintage capacitor in place.    *** Warning*** Any modifications should only be done by a qualified tech as there are deathly high voltages stored in tube amps!