The Harmony Company is a former

guitar manufacturing Guitar manufacturing is the use of machines, tools, and labor in the production of electric and acoustic guitars. This phrase may be in reference to handcrafting guitars using traditional methods or assembly line production in large quantities usi ...

company that is currently a

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...

owned by

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

-based BandLab Technologies. Harmony was, in its heyday, the largest

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person ...

manufacturer in the United States. It made many types of

string instruments In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some ...

, including

ukulele The ukulele ( ; ); also called a uke (informally), is a member of the lute (ancient guitar) family of instruments. The ukulele is of Portuguese origin and was popularized in Hawaii. The tone and volume of the instrument vary with size and con ...

s, acoustic and

electric Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

guitars and

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

s. The company ceased in 1975, with the "Harmony" brand being relaunched by BandLab in 2018 to produce

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electric Guitar amplifier, sound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickup (music technology), pickups ...

s and

amplifiers An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It is a two-port electronic circuit that uses electric power from a power suppl ...

History

Harmony was founded in 1892 by Wilhelm Schultz. In 1916, Sears, Roebuck and Co. purchased it, in part to corner the

market. At the time Harmony was led by Joe Kraus, who was chairman until 1940. In 1928, Harmony introduced the first of many

Roy Smeck Leroy George Alfred "Roy" Smeck (6 February 1900 – 5 April 1994) was an American musician. His skill on the banjo, guitar, and ukulele earned him the nickname "The Wizard of the Strings". Background Smeck was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. ...

models, and went on to become the largest producer in the U.S. They sold 250,000 pieces in 1923 and 500,000 in 1930, including various

models A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , . Models can be divided int ...

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin. ...

s, and

mandolin A mandolin (, ; literally "small mandola") is a Chordophone, stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally Plucked string instrument, plucked with a plectrum, pick. It most commonly has four Course (music), courses of doubled St ...

s. In the late 1930s, the firm began making

s again after a 19-year hiatus. They also bought brand names from the bankrupt

Oscar Schmidt Oscar Daniel Bezerra Schmidt (born February 16, 1958), nicknamed ''Mão Santa'' (Holy Hand), is a Brazilian retired professional basketball player. Schmidt primarily played the power forward and small forward position, was 2.06 m (6 ft 9 i ...

Co.—La Scala, Stella, and Sovereign. They sold not only Harmony products, but instruments under the Sears name, Silvertone, and a variety of trade names—Vogue, Valencia, Johnny Marvin, Monterey, Stella, and others. In 1940, after Kraus had a conflict with management, he left, but then bought enough stock to restart the company independently. Between 1945 and 1975, the Chicago firm mass-produced about ten million guitars. The company reduced their output over the years, later focusing on student models sold through

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC , Trade name, doing business as JCPenney (colloquially Penney's and abbreviated JCP) is an American department store chain store, chain with 649 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. It is managed as part of the Catalys ...

. The Harmony brand peaked in 1964–1965, selling 350,000 instruments, but low-end foreign competition led to the company's demise 10 years later. The pickups on almost all electric guitars and basses that Harmony produced were manufactured by Rowe Industries Inc. (later known as H.N. Rowe & Company, Rowe DeArmond Inc., and DeArmond Inc.) of Toledo, Ohio. Many of the instrument amplifiers badged with the Harmony name were manufactured by "Sound Projects Company" of

Cicero, Illinois Cicero is a town in Cook County, Illinois, United States, and a suburb of Chicago. As of the 2020 census, the population was 85,268, making it the 11th-most populous municipality in Illinois. The town is named after Marcus Tullius Cicero, a R ...

. The Harmony Guitar Company ceased in 1975,
''In 1975 the Harmony Guitar Co. in Chicago ceased operations and had a huge three-day auction.'' and sold the Harmony name. In the early 2000s, an unrelated company, the Westheimer Corp., based in Lake Barrington, Illinois briefly imported "reissue" Harmony guitars. In 2018, BandLab Technologies claimed to be "relaunching" the Harmony brand with a new series of electric guitars and guitar amps. Since being bought by BandLab, USA made Harmony Guitars are built in Kalamazoo, Michigan by the Heritage Guitar Company. Heritage Guitars is also owned by BandLab. The brand has since been relaunched with American-made models such as the Rebel and the Jupiter.

Gallery

File:BarrettHarmonyGuitar.jpg, 1963 Sovereign
(

Syd Barrett Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006) was an English singer, guitarist and songwriter who co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd in 1965. Until his departure in 1968, he was Pink Floyd's frontman and primary songwriter, ...

's 1st guitar) File:Harmoney guitar - A Birdhouse with Soul.jpg, Harmony acoustic File:Silvertone model 319 (1971) by Harmony Company, MIM PHX.jpg, Silvertone model 1219 (1971) by Harmony File:Harmony Archtone H1213 (SN 886H1213).jpg, H1213 Archtone (c.1963) File:Harmony H15 Bobkat.jpg, H15 Bobkat File:Silvertone 1480 (Harmony H19 Silhouette).jpg, H19 Silhouette
(Silvertone 1480) File:Harmony Stratotone H88, H44, & Fernandes ZO-3.png, H88, H44 StratoTone, compared with travel guitar File:Per Ängkvist 3 2011.jpg, H44 StratoTone (played by Per Ängkvist) File:Dan Auerbach.jpg, H47 StratoTone, modified by guitar tech of

Dan Auerbach Daniel Quine Auerbach (; born May 14, 1979) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and record producer, best known as the guitarist and vocalist of The Black Keys, a blues rock band from Akron, Ohio. As a member of the group, Auerbach has ...

See also interview video and transcription:

File:Johnbutler(by Scott Dudelson).jpg, H49 StratoTone Jupiter ( Silvertone 1423) File:Airline Stratotone.jpg, H7208

StratoTone (Airline Roy Smeck StratoTone) File:Harmony H53 Rocket - Jason rocking some riffs.jpg, H53 Rocket File:Black Keys at MOG.jpg, H78 3-pickups with Bigsby File:Harmony H82 Rebel body.png, H82 Rebel

References

External links

Official website
at National Music Museum {{BandLab Technologies Guitar manufacturing companies of the United States Companies based in Lake County, Illinois Musical instrument manufacturing companies based in Chicago Mandolin makers

History

Gallery

Further reading

References

External links