The neck is pure Valco – a mid-thickness finished chunk with a Gumby head, binding, and celluloid blocks. The humongous bridge, a style popular at the time, is at least 3/8″ thick to accommodate the height of the bolt-on neck, not unlike an archtop. You can’t tell because the soundhole is bound on the inside. The top is of select white spruce, knowing Kay, probably laminated. The body shape, a fat 151/2″ dreadnought, is pure Kay. This particular guitar (SN#2-3825) was built in early 1968, just before the end. Indeed, except for the Valco necks, these were identical to Kay models, down to the bridge, pickguard and trim. In 1967, National introduced a line of acoustic guitars that were – surprise, surprise – made by Kay, which had also switched to bolt-neck acoustics by that time. The National Model N-720 shown here dates from the short-lived Valco-Kay era. One year later, both were out of business. Valco saw an opportunity and purchased Kay. The Kay Musical Instrument Company, which had recently built a new factory, was on the ropes. These were used on its fairly limited line of acoustic guitars, offering the advantages of cheaper, faster production and, oh by the way – you could put them on electric guitars, too!īy ’67, the guitar boom was slackening, and competition from imports was taking its toll. Then in 1949 Valco came up with its own neck that bolted on without a heel. Sometimes necks, neck parts, and even bodies came from Gibson.
Even most of Valco’s National and Supro jazz boxes had necks bolted on the inside of the body. After World War II, when Valco shifted its emphasis to electric guitars, the predilection for bolt-on necks continued. Pretty hard to affix a neck with a dovetail and hide glue on a piece of nickel or plated brass.
And the principal purveyor of bolt-neck acoustics in the ’60s was the Valco company, maker of National, Supro, and, at the end, Kay guitars, including this end-of-the-line model N-720.įor National, the notion of bolting on an acoustic neck no doubt derived from its origins, the metal-bodied resonator guitars that began circa 1926.
It was mainly American mass manufacturers who foisted this form on baby boomers anxious to impress chicks with licks. But the more I learned, the more I realized that early Japanese acoustics almost always had glued-in necks, like EKOs, though by the mid-’60s EKO had produced some of the worst bolt-neck acoustics in history. In my more naïve younger years, I used to attribute such ungainly guitars to Japanese manufacturers, or maybe the Italians, as in EKO. Even though there have been many great guitars – from Maccaferri (and before) to Seagull – sporting respectable versions. Most acoustic guitar players will likely show disdain for any instrument with a bolt-on neck.
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