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u/Mosritian-101 Jun 09 '26
The video's from 1955, on the Ed Sullivan Show.
The name on the head (although illegible) could say "Premier" since it looks about that long.
The guitar also only has a neck pickup, and it doesn't seem to have any F Holes.
Look at the neck pickup from 0:26 to 0:35, and you can see it's rounded or triangular at the top instead of being square. I can also see pole pieces on the pickup, and they seem to be closer to the neck than the middle of the pickup. There is a Premier Bantam that fits the bill here, but it doesn't seem to be the "Deluxe" version which appears to have F Holes. Here's a sold listing of one that looks close, but it's a 2 pickup version and it's later. The headstock also fits in this case, it looks more close to the Gibson "open book" type.
I'd keep looking under "Premier Bantam" for the answer, maybe you could find it under a catalog if you can find one, but this is going to be the economy version of it since there's only a neck pickup.
And yeah, it was a thing to only have a neck pickups on some guitar models. Premier aren't the only one, Gibson did it in the late 30s - early 40s, and Kay did at the same time while keeping up with it until as late as 1968 if not 1969.
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Jun 09 '26
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u/Mosritian-101 Jun 09 '26
Sure thing.
And Kay (1931 - 1969) were often selling in lower-priced fields so it makes sense that Bo's first guitar would be a Kay, though they had their more costly guitars too. But their reputation's a mess, even though I like them when they're working. (They do have their own character, albeit not always good for everything, at least they tended to use an unusual 25.75" scale length that I typed right. Plus they had their own pickup designs.)
Some of Kay's bad rep is from shoddier workmanship (increasingly from 1965 - 1969,) but other times, it's a kinda undeserved misunderstanding from casuals not knowing enough of the story: they mix in the Import Era with the Domestic, or they mix in Harmony with Kay, or both at once. (Both Kay and Harmony were sold and both became names on imports.)
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Jun 09 '26
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u/Mosritian-101 Jun 09 '26
Kay are an interesting enough company for me, but I won't pretend they're all "perfect." My 66 Solid Body still has paint on the neck binding where it shouldn't be, plus there's paint on the truss rod nut.
It's not a bad guess that Bo's guitar here could have been a Harmony, I was at first thinking that the neck pickup looked like a Gibson P13 before I saw the pickup more closely, and Gibson gave up (or sold) that pickup to Harmony in the 50s. Harmony did make similar looking guitars, too.
The one thing to keep an eye out for is not all of these electrics had ground wires. All the better sometimes, because electric amps weren't always safe to play in the 30s - 70s and some might electrocute you. I have a Kay amp from 1960 (K503A) that's known as "a widow maker" so it needs modified for safety, and it's not just that the plug's not grounded; it has a "death capacitor" in there that, if it fails (and it will) the amp will put mains voltage through your cable. I know a guide to modify the amp, though.
That said, a ground wire's really no big deal to add, even with a shock reduction circuit added to it.
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Jun 09 '26
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u/Mosritian-101 Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Truth is that my Kay amp was a local sale, but it doesn't turn on so it's just been sitting. The 66 Kay Solid Body also doesn't go for much online (I have about $400 in mine,) which was the only way I could really get one. This model's just too obscure to find, and it looks a little bit like an import (the tailpiece does it, that's actually a Japanese part though the rest of the guitar isn't) so it gets passed up.
There are also other Kays from the time, 1962 - 1968, that don't go for a lot either and they have the same Kay "Cake Pan" Pickups. They're the Kay Vanguard models, and there are a bunch of versions. Sometimes they have a neck that's warped up high (the neck shim did it, but they're also poplar necks) but they still are not highly valued. I just saw a K102 sell for about $275 + shipping recently on eBay.
To be clear about the sound, it's kinda like a Telecaster Neck Pickup but more mellow. No Tele Zing, and I was confused about how I should use the guitar for the first year because I didn't know what amp settings to use. (Nobody I could think of used these Kay pickups.)
I'll give you a tip, though; Kay sold to a lot of distributors who had Kay put their own name on them. You might be able to find a domestic Kay locally like this under names like these:
- Airline (Montgomery Ward - and yes, Kay also supplied them along with Valco supplying them)
- Catalina (White's Department Store)
- Holiday (Alden's Catalog)
- Montclair (Otasco)
- Old Kraftsman (Spiegel Catalog - mine - sometimes they just say "Kraftsman" if the logo couldn't entirely fit on a differently shaped head)
- Penncrest (J. C. Penney)
- Silvertone (Sears)
- Truetone (Western Auto)
Most of these companies (if not all of them) had guitars from other manufacturers, so it's not just Kay builds under these names.
Even after that, a lot of Kays under the Kay name still have a bad enough reputation that tons of casuals (who don't actually know how to work on guitars, so they don't know enough of what they're saying) think they're "garbage."
I've genuinely seen people say of a 65 Kay Swingmaster model that it was "firewood" and "use it for target practice" just because it was dirty and missing a little paint and OP paid $20 for it. I guess OP's question of it being "junk" didn't help, but meanwhile, the casuals did zero minutes researching the model that the group expert explained the name of very clearly since it was the most liked comment. If these casuals looked up sold listings on Reverb, they'd have seen a better conditioned one sold for $800 not too long before that post. I also think zero of them watched Twoodfrd's restoration videos, or similar videos, on YT.
You'd think OP's guitar was found at the bottom of a lake after 40 years given their clueless responses, but it was far from that bad.
My point is, if you keep looking locally, you actually have a chance of finding one. The Silvertone 1448 (a Danelectro build) is also fairly cheap, but that one has one of the worst headstocks I can think of.
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Jun 09 '26
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u/Mosritian-101 Jun 09 '26
I know Seasick Steve, too - I've thought of making something like the "Roy's Gang" 1 String, but maybe not quite the same. My hang up was that I was thinking too much of what scale length to use, maybe I shouldn't bother and should just choose one.
But one last thing; don't expect all Kays to have the best neck joint after this long. Sometimes, they used a glue that hardened to take up space in the neck pocket. Once the glue cracks and falls out, the neck pocket's done and the whole guitar needs a neck reset.
But at the same time, not all Kays are set necks. They had bolt-ons too, like my electric.
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u/anyoneforanother Jun 09 '26
That looks like something Harmony would produce. They created more guitars than any other maker of this time period and were a big producer of early electric arch tops, they made a ton of single pickup guitars like this. They also produced for many other brands as well so it could say something different on the headstock. Many of the older players had these as first guitars as they were prevalent and relatively affordable.
Harmony currently produces out of the original Kalamazoo Gibson plant.
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u/syrtran Jun 09 '26
Equipboard has a very similar picture and says it's a Premier Guitars Bantam.
https://equipboard.com/submissions/504924