Former type Private Genre Producer Defunct 1968 | Industry Musical instruments Founded 1940 | |
Founder Victor Smith, Al Frost, and Louis Dopyera | ||
Valco was an American manufacturer of guitars, guitar amplifiers, and other musical instruments from the 1940s through 1968.
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History
In the 1930s, Valco was formed by three business partners and former owners of the National Dobro Company; Victor Smith, Al Frost, and Louis Dopyera. The company name was a combination of the three partner's first initials (V.A.L.) plus the common abbreviation for company (Co.)
Valco manufactured Spanish acoustic guitars, metal-bodied resonator guitars, electric lap steel guitars, and vacuum tube amplifiers under a variety of brand names including Supro, Airline, Oahu, and National. They also made amplifiers under contract for several other companies such as Gretsch, Harmony, and Kay. In the 1950s they began producing solid body electric guitars.
Valco merged with Kay Musical Instrument Company in 1967, however the merged company quickly went out of business in 1968 because of financial difficulties.
Replicas and revivals
Since Valco's demise, a number of manufacturers have reissued several different reissues or derivatives of Valco instrument and amplifier models. Eastwood Guitars currently produces a variety of reissue Airline guitars, as well as at least one Supro model. Several of Valco's earlier amplifier models are currently reissued by Vintage47 Amps of Mesquite, Nevada. These amps are somewhat unusual in modern times because they implement octal preamp tubes, whereas later amplifiers leading right up to present times use miniature noval preamp tubes.
In late 2013, it was announced that Absara Audio of Port Jefferson Station, New York, had purchased the rights to the Supro trademark from noted electronic engineer Bruce Zinky. Zinky himself had used the Supro name for a series of amps beginning in 2005 from his company, Zinky Electronics. Absara announced in January 2014 that a series of new Supro amps would debut at the Winter 2014 NAMM Show in Anaheim, California. The new Supro amps are cosmetically reminiscent of their progenitors from the 1960s.