Help on this wierd airline/supro/national

[VintageGuitars_89]

I bought this guitar a while back and am still having trouble identifying it. Help? It's labelled "McKee" but I assume its either a kay (check the pickups) an airline (has classic airline white headstock front) a supro (has traditional supro set-neck and finish) or a national. It is a bound body and strange "flower" fret markers. I'd love to know the exact model and generally how much it's worth. I placed it in the $600-$700 range with repairs done, but it may be a lot more? Check it out!


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[simonm]

Hmm - it doesn't look like a Supro/National/Airline kind of gtr to me, although the fretboard inlays are like the fancy kind used on the National Westwood (map shape) model. Maybe whoever made it outsourced the neck, or Valco provided the neck + body and another outfit added the hardware? Have you got a shot of the headstock

I'm not sure what you mean by the "traditional supro set-neck and finish" - Valco switched to bolt on necks by around '57, this looks like a 60s gtr to me. The typical finishes on solid-bodies were a thick plastic ("no-mar") coating from this time on too.

[VintageGuitars_89]

I'll try to get a shot of the headstock. It is the gumby-shaped headstock with a white pickguard-material overlay. Factory kluson tuners. What throws me off are the kleenex pickups. Weren't those only in kay and airline-made guitars?

[simonm]

I don't know anything about Kay really, but those do look like Kay pickups, like the ones on this 1962 Swingmaster:

http://www.vintagesilvertones.com/forsa ... aster.html

Airline was a brand rather than a manufacturer - so an Airline guitar (sold in Montgomery Ward's) could be made by Kay or Harmony or Valco or a range of other companies. Valco also made Supro and National. But Kay and Valco were both based in Chicago, so it's not impossible they collaborated.

McKee might have been a small department store. Is there any kind of number (on a foill or metal strip on the back of the heastock? That would be the Valco serial number)

[Michael Ambrose]

Time for the Valco junkie to weigh in... hahaha!

I'm sorry to say, I'm thinking Frankenstein here. I've never seen that combination of features on any Chicago-esque instrument.

That pickup config, mid and bridge, is definately a custom cut... as is the selector and the pot on the upper bout.

Gumby headstock with Kessel Kleenexes? Definately never happened.

I can't tell from the pics, but is that a string-through body? DEFINATELY not stock.

The dead giveaway is the set neck. You'd be hard pressed to find a single solid-body guitar come out of Chicago with a set neck. Even the top-of-the-line National Resoglass axes had two/three-bolt necks. Off the top of my head, I can actually only think of four guitars that come close... the Roy Smeck, a corresponding Kay (both finished in this nasty textured countertop material, though some Smecks turned up in natural), the Stratotone Newport, and Kay's answer named the Stradolin... all with some crazy neck-through design... NONE which would be confused for this piece.

Like I said, this one's got Frankenstein written all over it.

Pull the pickguard and shoot some high-res pics, especially of the pots. Try and pull some pot and pickup codes if you can.

If you can, pull the neck and check the pocket.

For a split second, I wanted to entertain the idea of this being a Murph... just a though... i can't remember if Murphs were set-neck or bolted.

Anyhoo...

POST MORE PICS!! I'm jazzed on this one!! hahaha...

[Big Beat]

We need more pics. Head, back showing neck joint, body under guard.

Right now all I can say is that the whole pickguard assembly was made by some previous owner, with recycled Kay pickups. No American company offered this combination of pickup placement and strings-through-guard on any factory stock model.