Kay Musical Instrument Company Kay Musical Instrument Company Kay Musical Instrument Company was a musical instrument manufacturer of the United States, in operation from the 1930s until the 1960s. Kay was established in 1931 in Chicago, Illinois, by Henry Kay Kuhrmeyer, from the assets of the former Stromberg-Voisinet (founded as Groeschel Mandolin Company in 1890). Kay offered their first electric guitar in 1936 — five years after the Rickenbacker "Frying pan", and the same year as the Gibson ES-150. However, the Kuhrmeyer-owned Stromberg-Voisinet brand had produced the Stromberg Electro even earlier, in 1928, making the short-lived model arguably the first commercial electric guitar. The
Sampler (musical instrument) a powerful and versatile musical tool. A sampler is organized into a hierarchy of progressively more complicated data structures. At the bottom lie samples, individual recordings of any sound, recorded at a particular sample rate and resolution. While a common sound to sample is a musical instrument being played (e.g., a pianist playing a piano note or an organist playing a pipe organ), a sample could be any sound, including "non-musical" sounds such as a typewriter clacking or a dog barking. A reference center pitch indicates the actual frequency of the recorded note. Samples may also be "looped" by defining