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The Harmony Company is an American musical instrument manufacturer that was in its heyday the largest stringed instrument manufacturer in the country. A musical instrument is a device constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. ...
Harmony was founded in 1892 by Wilhelm Schultz. In 1916, it was bought by Sears, Roebuck and Co., which wanted to corner the ukulele market. In 1928 Harmony introduced the first of many Roy Smeck 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 models of guitars, banjos, and mandolins. Sears, Roebuck and Company (NYSE: S) was founded in Chicago, Illinois as a catalog merchandiser in 1886 by Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck. ...
Ukulele The ukulele (ʻukulele in Hawaiian and standard Hawaiian English; pronounced , or the Anglicised ), or uke, is a fretted string instrument which is, in its construction, essentially a smaller, four-stringed version of the guitar. ...
Cover of a 1928 instructional book for ukulele by Roy Smeck, the Wizard of the Strings. ...
The Harmony Company of Illinois, United States, manufactured a wide variety of musical instruments which were popular during most of the 20th century. ...
Different kinds of guitars The guitar is a fretted and stringed musical instrument, used in a wide variety of musical styles, and is also widely known as a solo classical instrument. ...
Old 6-string zither banjo For other uses, see Banjo (disambiguation) The banjo is a stringed instrument of African American origin, early or original examples sometimes being called the gourd banjo. One African banjo predecessor is called the Akonting. ...
Carved and round backed mandolins (front) A mandolin is a small, plucked, stringed musical instrument, descended from the mandora. ...
In the late 1930s the firm was making violins again after a 19 year hiatus, bought brand names from the bankrupt Oscar Schmidt Co.—La Scala, Stella, and Sovereign—and was marketing not only Harmony products, but also using the Sears name, Silvertone, plus a variety of trade names, such as Vogue, Valencia, Johnny Marvin, Monterey, and others. This article does not cite its references or sources. ...
The company hit a peak in 1964-1965, selling 350,000 instruments, but low-end foreign competition led to the company's demise 10 years later. Between 1945 and 1975, the Chicago firm had mass produced about ten million guitars. The company reduced their output over the years, later focusing on student models sold through JCPenney. J. C. Penney Company, Inc. ...
The company is still in business in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Incorporated Village in 1956. ...
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