There’s a lot to complain about with this bass. We’ll get to all that.

 

There are a few things, however, not to complain about, and one is the prewar sound. This thing has the sound. I’m not going to try and characterize the sound of an old Kay, and not everyone will love it, but if you do, you will recognize it. And here’s the weird thing -it has it IN SPITE of the fact that this bass was converted at one point to a left handed bass. Yes, fully converted, complete with a switch of the bass bar location to under the G side of the inside of the top, and a matching soundpost on the E side. Yes, it currently has a right handed bridge and nut. (Actually the nut would work for either set up.Large grooves that can also work for gut.) The fingerboard has been made more or less round - the bevel has been planed out. Yes, it could be switched to left handed ( I hesitate to say back to left handed). 

The other thing is playability. The string height is medium low (5 to 8mm at the high end of the fingerboard) and there’s room to go higher if needed or it would be easy enough to shorten the bridge a bit. It has a nice clean fingerboard sound in pizzicato, with this set of somewhat plunky sounding D’addario Helicore orchestral and a Daddario prelude A. 

The most obvious complaint is the condition of the finish.  I think “abused” is a pretty accurate description. It’s interesting that the bass has fake flames on the back even though I’m pretty  sure the lacquer finish is original. But what is most striking is the general wear and tear - especially the exterior side linings which are badly flaking, and that big scar from a really tenacious oval sticker on the front left side. Someone must have had a favorite band they wanted to advertise? It’s also missing a scroll ear (common on old Kay basses - we call them the “Van Gogh” model) I can throw in a Kay bass ear with the deal as I bought a box of them at one point. Another thing to complain about is that someone repaired an old heel break with a very long double keyed butterfly dovetail inlayed into the heel. Yes it will keep everything in place in the future, but it was not neatly done and the neck  angle is a low even for a Kay.  You'll notice the bridge is correspondingly short. 

There is more work that could be done to address some of these shortcomings, of course, a refinish, a wedge under the fingerboard - those are possible, but as it's sounding and playing well, I'm offering it as it is. This is not an ideal bass for arco playing, but I doubt that’s why you read this far.  That band sticker scar would look a lot better filled up with more shellac btw.