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Kay Vanguard.
One heckuva raucus blues machine.

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1-31-04
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Logo plate straight off the refrigerator in  Flash Gordon's Captain Suite !  I have de-glued masking tape holding the logo on because the hole in the headstock for the plate's brad, is loose and I don't want the original brad to fall out nor the plate to droop and get snagged on something before I get a chance to dowel the brad hole nicely.  Likewise I've taped the nut with de-glued masking tape to keep it from getting lost.

Notice the minimal amount of fret wear in this page photos.  The marks on the frets are not wear but are inductive electrolysis staining where the pickup magnet loads or unloads (depending upon magnet polarity) electrons onto or off of the strings which seek to rebalance by giving or taking electrons from the frets by electrolysis ....amplified by dissimilar metal in the frets and strings.
OK, here comes the priceless "custom" job.  Customizing a guitar to express a person's own vision of decor was very common just about as long as guitars have been around.  My first guitar was a Framus studio size acoustic.  I found a solid pearl button in my Mom's jewelry box we searched through;  She gave it to me.  Before I glued it onto my guitar, I tried out that button on just about every spot on the guitar I could imagine.  If finally wound up centered on the upper bass bout, and I was one proud pre-teen;  My time had come.

I get a big charge out of taking one of these old "customized" great sounding guitars to a jam session;  The funkier looking the guitar the better.  It's kinda like the imortal story of the old guy that walks into a jam session and pulls a beat up but shined up old horn from a burlap bag ......and blows the place away with a few tunes;  And then confidently but unassumingly putting the horn back away in the bag happy to have been bought a few drinks and got to show his stuff.

I can read a guitar quite well, ...and here's what I read into this guitar's "custom" work.  Up until about the mid-late 70's craft stores and toys departments sold a jar of clear laquer based or acetone based acrylic glue along with small bottles of different colors of glitter in each bottle.  Spread the glue like paint and sprinkle glitter and stars to your heart's content;  In 20 minutes drying time personalized custome art would be ready to get down on a guitar. In those same store departments were different size and different colored glitter-stars in small bottles, and glue-back foil stars on several wax finished pages in booklet form.  This glitter and stars took it's place among the previous decade's home-spun psychedelic paint jobs on guitars that are quite valuable today.  Artist Peter Max inspired glitter and stars to accent psychedelic art as psychdelia and glitter / stickers periods overlapped. As in the example of this guitar;  After removing the pickguard with all of the electronics mounted on it, and laying the assembly down horizontal, ....the glue was painted onto the pickguard and the glitter and sprinkled and placed to suit the usually young artist.  Then stars were applied.  Since the glue was laquer or acetone based it softened and warped this pickguard over time, and it made the plastic around the screw holes weak;  So when the screws were screwed down too tight the plastic around some screw holes would break off.  The layout of this "customizing" work looks to me to have been made by a motivated young lady, maybe even for a guy that owned the guitar;  I can see suggestions and feel the mojo.  Whoever did the personalized "customizing", it's also obvious that the owner(s) were proud of the guitar because it's actually in pretty darn good shape considering how much handling it has received.

Should a Buyer desire to replace the pickguard, it is a quite easy affair of tracing the old pickguard onto a new sheet of plastic blank.  Then the new pick guard is cut out and the holes drilled for the knobs, jack, pickup and perimeter mounting screws.  I can do that if a Customer desires or any reasonbly capable guitar mechanic or plastics shop could also do it quite easily.  If I could ever get around to this guitar making it to my work bench, ...I feel pretty sure I would make a new dark colored pickguard to place under this one giving it a laminated look and serving to reinforce the laquer / acetone warping of the current pickguard.  Matching the existing one up on top of the new one, I would place a sheet of wax paper over them and iron the present pickguard down flat onto the new one.  Or I might make a clear one to top the present one with and iron from the bottom to flatten the present one flat onto the clear top one.  In any event I think the soul of these wonderful old personalized guitars should have a chance to come alive once again as their creator intended.  I've cleaned up a number of old guitars with personalized artwork on them and in most cases their spirit makes it all well worth while.  Not only does the guitar get to be complimented a lot, which is Good, the guitar's soul wasn't insulted and often comes right out of the guitar once it's played again.  If for some reason a pickguard underlayment or overlayment didn't feel right I'd have either a new dark or white underlayment or a clear overlayment on the top to use, while making a framed wall hanger out of the present old glitter stars from heaven;  What a nice thing to aspire to.
I can tell that the dot spot of finish missing near the bass waist was where a drop of the glitter laquer dripped onto the guitar body and not attempted to be removed until the laquer was dry;  Which popped the dot of finish off since the glue and top finish had become one in chemical bond.

This guitar is actually in quite good shape;  And man does it ever sound good and play good !
GEEEZZ..... the contours of the body make this pic look like the body is made out of rubber and bent !  But it's just the lines of the guitars edge that make it look bent like rubber.  The neck is straight and the frets only minimally played;  So much so that I had to look closely to see that the frets did have some playing on them.  This tells me that the young lady was mighty proud of this guiar as she tried to learn to play it over quite some time as is indicated by the normal finish chips along the headstock edge where the guitar was leaned up against things.

The de-glued masking tape around the nut is to make sure it doesn't fall out and disapper.
Ahhhhhh....... here we can see that the body wasn't made out of rubber !  A nice and flat slab of wood aged about 20 years, with some playing to tease the molecules in the woods aging.
Flash Gordon's view of his refrigerator when he's weightless in space and floating upside down.  I suppose the refrigerator is where the Cap'n kept his stash of Lunar Schlitz.
The glittered glue wasn't very permanant;  It's manufacturers and vendors wouldn't want Mom and Dad to get angry with glitter and stars all over their kids bedrooms and not be able to wash off reasonably easy.  So we see here that only about 1/3 of the glitter glue remains intact between the knobs and pickup.  Or, hmmmm..... It also appears that the dissimilar glitter wear could also be influenced by edy current between the pickup and remaining electronics.
It actually looks like someone began to clean the glitter glue off but didn't finish the job between the pickup and the knobs area.  Little chips and dings around the edges of the guitar also demonstrate that it was handled a lot, much more than it was played as shown by the minimally played frets.

Notice also that the rear strap button is broken off.  That's a very easy fix;  Pop the broken off stem out and replace the plastic strap button with a modern one of the very same design.