A wild Kay/Teisco ET200 appeared!
Erm yeah, nah. What a pile of steaming Sheep dip. These are absolutely diabolical to play. Don't get me wrong they look cool as hell, some play OK, some not so. This falls into the latter. I do love a good challenge though. Im not sure what acid they were on in Japan circa '62 but it must have been some mighty powerful stuff. Luckily I'm a bit of a magician and managed get a super low action, that plays great!
Pic 2 shows where the action needed to be to get any sort of tune out of this thing. I took the neck off and saw a great big lump of wood glued to the back, possibly some sort of shim, possibly a Guitar builders love juice. Chiselled it all away and set off trying to get the correct angle, I successfully got it where I wanted with 3 different shims, a huge one at the heel. The frets were GREEN. Now they're super shiny ✌️
The nut was plastic crap and glued in the wrong place, made a new one to a similar "groovy" shape. The saddle is just a curved bit of steel with tiny dents so the strings pop out with the lightest of strums, the break point from the rubbish trem doesn't help anything. Filed bigger grooves to get an angle and some stability. Re-soldered a few loose wires...and HEY PRESTO, THIS THING IS NOW A GARAGE ROCK BEAST. Oh wait had to hammer down loads of unseated frets.. Now it's a beast!!
Setup with 8's for slinky soulful jams.
Gallery 📸
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