This Japanese brand name was applied to several different models of electric mandolins built at a factory outside Tokyo. Because of its longer scale length, the Kent 744, the solidbody pictured above, is sometimes mistaken for—or tuned as—a mandola. As you can see, it was offered in sunburst, cherry, blond, and white, and like all gentlemen, I prefer blonds. Heck, there was even a Kent 744 lefty.
Below are a couple of examples of the Kent 836, the odd "violin-shaped cutaway" model from the 1967 catalog. What were they thinkin'? The KayKraft copy is from a few years earlier. It sports an Italian-built Eko pickup, but the proprietary pickups on the later models are considered quite collectible by those who collect pickups. (Not sure about the pickup on the pear-shaped model.) The company even offered an after-market mandolin pickup similar to the DeArmond.
Bluegrass great Jesse McReynolds reportedly did some recording with a Kent mandolin. For more info about Kents, visit Bob Gatewood's Kent collection page. For other examples of Japanese e-mandos, see Kingston, Conqueror, Bruno, and San Remo.
