Blues artist Jimmy Reed, a major influence on The Rolling Stones, played an unusual Kay electric guitar with a flat top and no soundholes. He became so closely identified with it – Kay even pictured him in catalogs with the guitar – that it is widely known today as the Jimmy Reed model. It’s offical name, however, was the Kay Thin Twin.

The Kay company, based in Chicago, was named for it’s president Henry Kay Kuhrmeyer. It began as Groeschel (founded in 1890), which became Stromberg-Voisinet, the first company to market an electric guitar and also one of the first to make guitars with laminated wood bodies. Kuhrmeyer changed the company name to Kay in 1931, and made it an industry leader in budget-priced guitars.

The Thin Twin took it’s name from it’s body depth, which was only slightly thinner than a cenventional acoustic guitar, and from it’s two pickups. The lack of soundholes gave the top enough stability to make the Thin Twin, along with a companion bass, one of the better performing Kay electrics of any era.