Shortly after the arrival of Barney Kessel as a Kay endorser in 1956, Kay expressed it’s enthusiasm in the model name of a new series of cutaway electric archtops – the Up-Beat. The model name also played off the popular jazz magazine “downbeat”.

The Up-Beat was originally available with one or two pickups. The three-pickup Up-Beat K8995 was added late in 1959, and it was an eye-catching instrument, with contrasting black finish and white plastic parts, along with the massive “Kelvinator” headstock. With a full complement of controls knobs – separate tone and volume for each pickup – it appeared to be a high-quality guitar, although the pickups were single-coils rather than the double-coil humbuckers that high-end guitars from Gibson and Gretsch featured by the late 1950s.

When Kessel left Kay for Gibson in 1960, he took Kay’s cloak of respectability with him. In the meantime, three-pickup jazz guitars were fast becoming passé (Gibson’s ES-5, the model that started it all in 1949, would only last only into 1961), and Kay’s Up-Beat played it’s last beat in 1960.