|
A View from the Back of the Rack: The Buckeye State of the Art
When I first learned of this guitar, it was known among cognoscenti as the State of Ohio guitar. I once wrote and essay
in which I dubbed it The Ugliest Guitar In The World. All of us had a point. The real name, however, is the Kay Solo King
K4102, and it dates to that heady period just before guitars really took off in 1960. Clearly somebody was hung over at
Kay that day! When I got a chance to actually have one, how could I pass it up?
Believe it or not, Kay was probably the first company to produce an electric guitar. The Kay Musical Instrument Company
began in Chicago in 1890 as the Groehsl Company, changing its name to the Stromberg-Voisinet Company in 1921. (It changed
to Kay-Kraft in the early '30s, then just Kay.) While there are unsubstantiated reports that Gibson's Lloyd Loar
experimented with electricity in the early 1920s, it's hard to imagine what he could have done. Electronic recording
and amplification were not invented until 1924-25. Lyon & Healy reportedly had an electronic bass in 1923, but
unfortunately it electrocuted players. Bummer. In October of 1928 S-V introduced the Stromberg Electro, a flattop
with an electro-magnetic transducer that was played through an amp with no controls. A few Chicago radio players
embraced the new technology, but the technology wasn't there yet and only a couple hundred Electros were made.
Modern-style electrics didn't appear until 1931. Except for lap steels, and perhaps the early bakelite Rickenbacker
Spanish guitars, Depression-era electrics were mainly archtops.
After the War, Fender's Telecaster didn't seem to get much attention from mass manufacturers, but the Gibson Les Paul
did, and by 1953 Kay, Harmony, and Valco were producing solidbodies. Kay's, interestingly enough, were unibody
construction, which basically means neck-through-body.
|
|
It was this concept that still shaped the Solo King, but what were they thinking?! It's really hard to get your mind
around this thing. It also appears to have unibody construction: one piece of wood. With the meat-cleaver head and
BuckeyeState profile, it's like no other guitar before or since. The effect is further enhanced by a - shall wee say -
chocolate brown finish. The pickguard is made of a speckled formica. These single-coil pickups, while primitive, are
actually not that bad, with a clean, crisp '50s sound. A single-pickup version was also produced. The archtop-style
bridge makes intonation a challenge and the fret job is a bit sloppy, but otherwise this doesn't play that badly.......
If, that is, you have the moxy to appear in public holding one! Can you see in the hands of Duane Eddy or the Ventures?
Needless to say, the Kay Solo King didn't catch on. The following year someone took a band-saw to the design and rounded
off the lower bout to be more like a Les Paul. These were sold through Montgomery Ward. Another even weirder version had
the upper shoulder and cutaway lopped off, and was sold as a Spiegel Old Kraftsman.
All these guitars were gone after 1961 and are particularly rare. I've seen guitars shaped like New Jersey, Texas, even
the United States, but none really come up to the bad taste of the State of Ohio. Like I said, ugliest guitar in the
world.
Michael Wright is a collector and historian who writes the monthly Different Strummer column featured in Vintage Guitar
Magazine.
|
|
