Following the lead of Gibson’s double-cutaway, thin-bodied ES-335 of 1958, Kay came with it’s own version in 1960 called the Jazz II.

Like many lower-quality guitars, this Kay was more style than substance. It’s humbucker-sized pickups were actually single-coils, nicknamed “Kleenex box” style by vintage collectors. The fingerboard inlays took their quarter-circle design from the guitars of National, another Chicago-based maker of budget-priced instruments. And the “Slim-Lite” neck was bolted-on, a feature it shared with no high-quality jazz guitars.

Despite the model name, Kay’s target for this guitar was questionable. It had a long, 16-inch scale at a time when the trend among some jazz players was toward the shorter scales lengths of Gibson’s Byrdland and ES-350T models.

The Jazz II became most famous, ironically, in blues-rock circles. Eric Clapton’s grandmother bought him a Jazz II (or a similar model) for his birthday, and that was the instrument wielded by the future guitar god in 1963 when he joined his first band, The Roosters.