Kay violin/fiddle scroll head archtop

[murrayatuptown]

Hello:

I am fascinated by the violin/fiddle scroll headstock Kay/Old Kraftsman archtop guitars, but also terrified by the insane overly optimistic variation in seller descriptions. I have seen some for sale with 'Excellent' description, and appearing 'rough' to 'damaged' to me in photos, and 'Fair' or 'Good' instruments that look beautiful.

I read posts about them here, dating to 2013, with time-biased value estimates. Not unusually, prices have risen since then.

But I am very leery about the cost of a neck reset on top of the ambitious sale prices nowadays. The actual condition could be worse, in terms of realistic maintenance needed.

Does anyone know the following details of the fiddlehead headstock archtops ?

Scale length
typical string gauges
Nut width
String spacing
Characteristics of the three-strip tuners

The 'funneled' string path between the nut and the tuners suggests to me the nut looks rather narrow.

They have a reputation for poorly-fit necks, leading to neck reset requirements. People putting whatever string gauge they preferred or had vs. what should be on there likely would not help the neck long-term.

These guitars are described as made by hand in very small numbers. The tuners might have been similar to or same as what Kay normally used. Hand-building makes sense, but not hand-made unique tuners...not to me anyway.

Apparently a steel reinforcement inserted into the neck instead of a truss rod was not unusual with inexpensive guitars long ago.

I may quite capably scare myself away from this type of guitar, before any of you add more deterrents. It seems that acquisition and repair are almost certain to exceed value (but for what 2024 prices have become).

If they are just not a good idea, I would be tempted to find a conventional acoustic archtop with a damaged neck and pursue the crazy idea of scarf-jointing a violin or viola or cello scroll onto a modern guitar neck. I'd have to figure out what fractional scale and instrument type might have reasonable dimensions to result in a normal nut width, string spacing and playability.

This is sounding increasingly stupider the more I type and look at what I wrote.

Thanks

Murray

[Dave Richard]

Quite a few years ago(6, 7?)I worked on one of those Kay scroll head archtops for a customer, including, if memory serves, a neck reset and a refret. His was in good cosmetic condition, it had been his father’s. Have you played one? While it was somewhat cool, given its shape, it did not compare well, tone-wise, to my own vintage Epiphones. And many old Kays do indeed require neck resets and refrets to play well. As do Epiphones!