Kay K30 refret and set up
946 views · Published 15 October 2015 · 2:35:10 · Indexed 20 September 2026
Channel: Sam Deeks · 2015 · Howto & Style
** Warning: long, unedited video ahead. Not intended for entertainment purposes ** THIS IS THE HIGHER RES. VERSION OF THIS VIDEO This video shows me seriously upgrading a Kay K-30 vintage / retro Les Paul guitar from 1980. This guitar definitely isn’t aimed at the bargain hunter, rather at the dangerously nostalgic or the seriously glam-rock stage performer. It has the look of the awful Woolworth special Kay guitars of the late ’70s and early ‘80s (admit it, we thought they were rubbish even then) but the performance of a modern Les Paul copy. In this video I replace the frets, the tuners, the nut, the wiring, the pots and capacitors, the pickups AND the strap buttons on this guitar :-) The only thing that’s original is the laminate body, the neck and the cavity covers. The new jumbo frets give the guitar at least another quarter century of life if not more. The pickups come from a Rally GL-300 which (if you’ve seen any of my videos) is the most amazing, least-known LP copy out there. They are superb, on a par with top name pickups. They’re so good that I nearly didn’t replace those in my GL-300 with Seymour Duncan Slash Alnico pickups. In the end I did, with the result that the Rally p/ups were available for this Kay K30. On this guitar (serial # Reloved121) I did the following set up work: • Dismantled, all over check, cleaned all components • Repaired damage to headstock rear • Replaced tuners with sealed units • Re-fretted the neck with StewMac Jumbo fret wire • Levelled, re-profiled and polished the new frets (twice for extra precision!) • Re-wired the guitar with new pots, caps and wiring • Replaced nut with bone LP nut • Set neck relief and bridge & nut action • Set intonation The result of this work is a great vintage guitar with a well-used, naturally-distressed finished. The most important thing here is how well it plays and the sound the pickups produce and it excels.
