Washburn Guitars

1864-1940

Lyon & Healy began in 1864 as a partnership of businessman George W. Lyon and Patrick J. Healy, acting as the Chicago, Illinois, outlet for Boston sheet music publisher Oliver Ditson and Company. By 1865, the company had expanded into reed organs and some small instruments. Lyon & Healy achieved independence by 1880, and around 1888 the company launched fully into fretted and plucked instruments (guitars, mandolins, banjos, and zithers) under the "Washburn" brand, which happened to be Lyon's middle name.

Tracing the history of any particular instrument of this period presents many obstacles. Not only did the Lyon & Healy company often change designs to follow the rapidly evolving consumer demand, the company also repaired instruments, and offered engraving services, including decorating instruments that it retailed but did not actually manufacture. As well, they built instruments for other retailers and distributors under various house brands.

In 1912, Washburn introduced the Lakeside Jumbo guitar, which some condider the first dreadnought-sized guitar. It bridged the gap between smaller-bodied "parlor" guitars of the late 19th and early 20th century and modern-day dreadnought and jumbo acoustic guitars.

George Lyon retired from the company in 1889 (died 1894). Patrick Healy then led the company into a period of major expansion, beginning with a larger new factory and improved mass-production techniques, and soon dominated the domestic market. Their 1892 catalog claimed to manufacture 100,000 instruments annually. Healy died 1905.

By the 1920s, Lyon & Healy faced growing competition from other instrument manufacturers as well as from the rise of other forms of entertainment, particularly film and the gramophone. Lyon & Healy gradually shifted manufacturing chores onto wholesaler Tonk Brothers, to whom they sold the guitar portion of the business in 1928, continuing to produce their own lines of harps, pianos, and organs.

Tonk Brothers turned to manufacturer J.R. Stewart Company to purchase and operate the massive factory, but this transition proved problematic and Stewart went bankrupt in 1930. Some of the Stewart assets were acquired by the Regal Musical Instrument Company, which had purchased the "Regal" brand name in 1908 from Lyon & Healy (who acquired it in 1905). Regal was chosen to reopen the Washburn factory (producing Regal instruments as well). Though the Washburn brand was preserved, it never regained its preeminence, and by the early 1940s had declined to nothing.

Modern era

There is no direct connection between the original Washburn brand and the modern Washburn International.

In the early 1960s, retail store the Chicago Guitar Gallery hired Rudolf "Rudy" Schlacher, a young German violin builder, as a repair technician. A few years later, Schlacher opened The Sound Post (in Evanston, Illinois) to focus on guitars. He soon realized the sales potential for lower-cost quality instruments.

Tom Beckmen and his wife Judy Fink Beckmen in 1972 left careers as music salesman and teacher (respectively) to launch a wholesale music business in Los Angeles, Beckmen Musical Instruments. It was Beckman Music that resurrected the Washburn name, and beginning in 1974 applied it to a series of quality imported acoustic guitars, made in Japan by Terada, as well as a selection of mandolins and banjos.

With that groundwork laid, Schlacher and Rick Johnstone, as Fretted Industries, Inc., acquired the Washburn name in 1977 (for $13,000) as the Beckmens took their business a different direction, and so the Washburn name was returned to Chicago. With assistance from Ikutaro Kakehashi (founder of Roland), Schlacher was able to find instrument factories in Japan that could meet the desired standards.

Fretted Industries acquired other lines as well, such as Oscar Schmidt autoharps.

Schlacher bought out Johnstone in 1987, and changed the company name to Washburn International. A stateside manufacturing operation was opened in 1991 for higher-end, short-run, and one-off instruments, as well as development and prototyping. That year, a Chicago Tribune article confidently places Washburn "among the top three guitar manufacturers in the world," behind only Fender and Gibson.

On December 15, 2002, Washburn International announced that it had completed acquisition of U.S. Music Corporation, and would be rolling its assets into that company in a reverse merger. Schlacher remained as CFO, appointing Gary Gryczan to COO; Gryczan had been Washburn's CFO from 1995 through 1998. The new USM's headquarters were in Mundelein (440 E. Courtland Street), which also housed the stateside Washburn luthiery, often referred to as "the USA Custom Shop."

Schlacher announced completion of selling USM to JAM Industries on August 24, 2009, and that he would be stepping away from his company after fully four decades.

We are pleased to join forces with a strategic partner like Jam Industries, that has a long, successful history in the music industry and has been a long-term business partner with U.S. Music for more than 20 years. It has been a thrilling and rewarding 40-year ride that has allowed me to realize my dreams and goals.

As R S Consulting he remained a consultant to the musical-instrument industry and was an executive producer for a small-budget film

Corporate offices were relocated to Buffalo Grove in 2012.

Production

Very few modern Washburn instruments have been built by the company itself. It has relied on outside factories and luthiers to fulfill their designs and meet public demand.

The first modern Washburn instruments were full-size guitars imported from Japan by Beckman Music. The 1974 range included one folk-style guitar (W-200) and eight dreadnoughts of increasing quality and decoration: W-240-12, W-250, W-260, W-280, W-300, W-300-12, W-500, W-600. These were constructed by Yamaki.

The first Washburn electric guitars were the Wing Series models, offered 1978-1984. This series of instruments featured innovative push-pull split humbuckers, brass hardware and neck-through designs. Most of the Wing Series models were produced by Yamaki, which was a custom-shop level Japanese manufacturer known for making Washburn acoustic guitars and the highly regarded Daion brand in the late 70s-early 80s. The Washburn Wings and Daion guitars shared many of the same design characteristics and components such as the string through bridges with brass saddles, brass circle inlays, brass nuts and pickups.

Some late-1970s Washburn-branded acoustic guitars were made in Japan by luthier Sadao Yairi and his son Hiroshi. (Their shop built instruments under a variety of labels, and took contract work for brands including Alvarez, which also had a long-standing relationship with Kazuo Yairi, Sadao's nephew.)

By 1991, production of Washburn instruments had shifted almost entirely to Korea(Samick).

Between 1994 and 2001, ten models of acoustic guitar were built for Washburn in the United States, five by Tacoma Guitars (Tacoma, Washington) and five by Bourgeois Guitars (Lewiston, Maine).

Washburn brought out a line of four USA-made dreadnoughts, available from 2002 to 2008. These were the D-78, D-80, D-82, and D-84. (All had the "-SW" suffix, for "solid wood," indicating that no laminate wood was employed.)

Other US made Washburn guitars from the 90s Custom Shop included the rare J-14 (1998) and J-15 (1998-1999) archtops which featured the Buzz Feiten tuning system. These were among the highest listing MSRP Washburn electrics made.

In 2012, when JAM Industries declined to renew the lease on the Mundelein facility, the Washburn luthiery closed. At the time, it was the ninth-largest employer in the village (the third-largest business), providing 180 jobs. The stated intent was to reopen at a smaller building in Buffalo Grove (1000 Corporate Grove Drive) but this is the probable end to Washburn instruments made in the United States.

Primary production has largely been shifting from Korea to factories in China.

Innovation and success

Most widely known for its guitars (both electric and acoustic), Washburn also makes electric basses, acoustic basses, banjos, mandolins, travel guitars, ukuleles, and amplifiers, as well as accessories including guitar cases, clothing, tuners, and straps.

In the 1980s, Washburn introduced the Festival Series of acoustic/electric guitars (the EA series, for "electrified acoustic"). They were thinner than standard acoustic guitars, thereby reducing susceptibility to feedback, a significant problem using acoustic or electrified acoustic guitars in large-venue performances. The addition of patented sound slots (rather than the traditional round soundhole) further reduced the possibility of feedback, and the guitars quickly became the go-to stage acoustic for artists such as Jimmy Page, George Harrison, and Bob Dylan. In the early 1990s when MTV introduced their Unplugged series, hardly a show went by without seeing a Festival Series guitar. The design also lent itself well to acoustic basses, and Washburn's AB Series quickly became popular both for its look and its tone, whether amplified or unplugged.

In recent years, Washburn licensed several notable guitar construction features:

VCC is similar to coil splitting, in that it changes the tone of a humbucking pick-up to that of a single coil, but it does it by turning the tone knob ... without the hum normally associated with single coils.

Model number suffixes

Over the past 40 years, Washburn has accreted a system of identifyig some of the most pertinent features in many of its acoustic instruments and some of the electric. Additional letters may be used to indicate the instrument's finish. While imperfectly applied, and sometimes awkwardly long, this can often be useful in identifying a given guitar.

This often combines with the prefix to tell a guitar's story. For example, the WLG110SWCEK indicates that it's part of the Woodline series (WL-), likely top of the line (110), Grand Auditorium (G) size, all solid wood, cutaway, piezo pickup, and originally included a case.

Past and present models

Any given series may have as little as one model.

Endorsers

Washburn uses the mechanism of endorsements, where:

The current list of Washburn Signature endorsers.
Standard Washburn Endorsers.

Current Signature Product Lineup

Previous Signature Product lineup