Vintage Kay Demo

[PennyroyalWe]

little quick and dirty demo I made of the Kay K-2B bass from the late 60’s.

 

[Spring Green]

I just got this and it sounds a lot like yours. I think it is a Kay but there's no K symbol. Needs some work. What do you like about yours, if anything? Did you have to work on it to make it playable?

 

[GretschWretch]

It's nice to finally get to hear what these sound like. It's a Kay, but it's a naming-rights Kay and not from the original Chicago factory. That Kay went out of business in 1969.

 

[PennyroyalWe]

I just got this and it sounds a lot like yours. I think it is a Kay but there's no K symbol. Needs some work. What do you like about yours, if anything? Did you have to work on it to make it playable?

Regrettably I sold mine a few years ago to buy another bass. I like the one I bought, but it doesn’t quite have the same mojo the old Kay did.

I had to do quite a bit to make it playable, most notably I had to shim the neck a LOT. The neck pocket was too wide, and the plywood that made up the underside of the neck pocket had bent upwards from the decades of string tension. I eventually just took wood filler and used it to make the pocket level again, and tighten up the sides so the neck wasn’t canting.

The bridge in these is truly atrocious. It’s not radiused, and there’s no way to adjust the saddles independently, they’re all one piece like a really crappy version of a tune-o-matic. Intonation was pretty bad too.

The frets were pretty uneven, too, but I just lived with that.

All that said, it had a really cool sound I think.

 

[GretschWretch]

Regrettably I sold mine a few years ago to buy another bass. I like the one I bought, but it doesn’t quite have the same mojo the old Kay did. All that said, it had a really cool sound I think.

Those old Japanese short-scale basses had a huge palette of sounds, sounding almost nothing like American product and often not at all like one another. Ask @JIO. By his count there are over 100 vintage Japanese pickup designs.

 

[JIO]

Those old Japanese short-scale basses had a huge palette of sounds, sounding almost nothing like American product and often not at all like one another. Ask @JIO. By his count there are over 100 vintage Japanese pickup designs.

Yep - no one has come close to producing such a huge variety of pu's since. Considering the ones I've used, they tend to be hot/big woody sounding pu's, like the OP's Kay.

 

[Spring Green]

I just got this and it sounds a lot like yours. I think it is a Kay but there's no K symbol. Needs some work. What do you like about yours, if anything? Did you have to work on it to make it playable?

Thanks. l love that dark, warm sound of the Kay, but it is a little to erratic at the moment for playing nicely with others. It may be just the new strings settling, but I'd like recommendations on basses with similar sounds that might be more playable. I love the lightness of the Kay and the short scale is perfect.

 

[PennyroyalWe]

Thanks. l love that dark, warm sound of the Kay, but it is a little to erratic at the moment for playing nicely with others. It may be just the new strings settling, but I'd like recommendations on basses with similar sounds that might be more playable. I love the lightness of the Kay and the short scale is perfect.

I can’t speak from experience, but maybe the Epiphone Newport?

 

[GretschWretch]

I can’t speak from experience, but maybe the Epiphone Newport?

Or the Gibson EB-0, The only real difference between that and the Newport is in the optics. Heck, if the sound is all that you are after, a Kalamazoo bass might fit the bill. But a new/reissue Newport will be far more accessible than the other two.