What Happened To Washburn Guitars?

hey how you doing as of releasing this video I will have very recently dropped a very very limited batch of these t-shirts logos on the left breast and on the back over here you'll see a joke that for legal reasons I do not understand so get it while they are hard I do not suspect this stock will last very long because there are less than 50 units of these t-shirts left as of recording this and you won't see this video for another day or two go get em hi today I want to have a chat with you about a topic near and dear to my heart Washburn guitars recently there's been some mod talk on YouTube about Dean guitars what's to become of that company in the future if the company is dying but people are still neglecting Washburn for some reason so I welcome you to my documentary on Washburn because I think the guitar Community has been solely lacking one of those Washburn started off as lion and Healy back in the 1860s and they were slowly easing their way from importing other companies instruments to making small instruments of their own you know mandolins and such and by the very late 19th century they'd progressed to making full-on full-scale classical guitars you can actually still find like late 1890s Washburn classical guitars on reverb which I think is very cool in 1912 the company changed their name once again to the Washburn company Washburn contributed a lot to guitar in its very early stage and by the 1920s they were already renowned for their extremely high quality Acoustics what happens in the next couple of decades isn't particularly interesting so let's speed it up a bit as ownership goes Washburn has been passed around with a bong over the years and that started in the 1920s in 1928 they were acquired by the Tonk Brothers company if I remember correctly a fancy furniture business and a couple decades later in 1977 they were acquired by threaded Industries for brace yourself thirteen thousand dollars I'm going to put what that is adjusting for inflation on screen because I have no idea and they promptly began production of the guitars in Japan with the help of the founder of a still very prominent Japanese company Roland 10 years later in 1987 one of three owners of the company bought out one of his co-owners changed the name yet again to Washburn International and opened the Chicago Stateside Factory for washburn's new very high end of waldoff Productions and by the 90s and this is probably where most people's knowledge of washband guitars even begins they'd gained major provenance in the Rock and metal scene working with artists like Dimebag Darrell and Nuno Bettencourt fast forward to late 2002 and Washburn had bought in Reverse merger rolled their assets into U.S music corporation which seven years later they ended up selling to KMC music KMC or their parent company exertus Jam as they they are known today or Jam Industries back when all of this actually happened is in charge of USM and Washburn to this day try to keep up with all the brand names it's not going to get any better Washburn even today is still known for their quality and craftsmanship but in most people's heads are now associated with artists like Nuno Dimebag and Scott Ian it's time for a sponsor break some of these videos take weeks to make and so sponsors really help out in this particular video is sponsored by Factor 75. us musicians and entertainers are lazy I haven't gotten out of my chair in two weeks because I've been working on this video not even to pee I won't tell you where I've been peeing though that's my secret I know you don't have the time to cook sometimes and that is all right but facta has you covered fact that delivers fresh never Frozen Chef prepared and ready to eat meals right to your doorstep it takes away the need for meal prepping I don't know anything about meal prepping because I don't move I've just said that but you may but it still ensures that you get all of that good tasty science-backed nutritional value that you 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quite as well as this little anecdote in preparation for this video I tried everything in my power to reach out to anyone at Washburn us music Corp KMC or that parent company Jam to join me for a brief Zoom call for this video and answer some questions of course it shouldn't have just been some random employee who doesn't know about the history of the company anyway which is why I was kind of going for someone in a bit of a higher up position at literally any of the four companies I just named I scoured LinkedIn email contact forms on the respective websites I sent countless DMS on LinkedIn to people who actually ended up accepting me I sent countless emails to different companies different people and I got nowhere I sent slightly varying messages to everyone but this was kind of the blueprint for all of them they were all very similar to this because this very briefly and concisely explains what I was actually trying to achieve I got through to one guy on LinkedIn like a week into trying who said he was fired from Jam five years ago and just hadn't updated his LinkedIn account so that was useless but I always felt a glimmer of hope when someone else at Jam finally responded it was the VP of sales at Exodus jam and he introduced me via email to the brand manager of Washburn Nick ellingsworth who then didn't end up responding to any of my emails yippee so I asked a few fellow YouTubers now not just any YouTubers but people who usually will have a connection at any company that you can think of and in response I got and I kid you not this Washburn still exist isn't that telling but yes Washburn does indeed still exist but at the same time not really I was able to find exactly one dealer who ships Washburn guitars anywhere near where I live and it's gear for music and 98 of what they offer on there are either acoustic semi-hollow electrics mandolins or banjos there is one electric base available along with an N2 and an N4 but none of those are in stock so finally just judging by what Washburn dealers have in stock these days it kind of seems like the company is reverted back to their 1880s routes except that not that long ago they released a new signature model for Nuno Bettencourt the Washburn Nelly the least Nuno Bettencourt guitar I have ever seen no treble low instead it has a hardtail Telecaster Bridge because it is a Telecaster and two single coil pickups what the only thing about this guitar that does scream Nuno is the Stevens extended cutaway and matter of fact he doesn't even seem to be using it look at the rise music video that is an end for why probably because the guitar solo has a ton of Whammy Bar in it Andy Nelly is a Telecaster weird guitar so having reached nothing but dead ends with the actual company so far I reached out to the last person who I thought might have some insight on Washburn Ola England I've been fortunate enough to come to get to know Ola over the past six months or so and having been a fan of his for much much longer than that I know he used to work very closely with Washburn if you didn't know this solo guitars which Ola England owns kind of existed before the actual company did in the form of Washburn Parallax solar models they were basically Ola England signature washburns and they looked exactly like the very base models of solar guitars do because they were ola's own designs the only difference was that they had Washburn on their headstock Apparently after KMC came along and bought the company a lot of employees left and not just regular employees either this includes the president of the the U.S music Corporation and also the person that Ola was working with for The Parallax guitars Ola then basically said goodbye to Washburn which wasn't all too difficult because he owned those designs and then started working on solar guitars with his ex Washburn contact when KMC bought Washburn it was immediately not their top priority at all bureaucracy happened and Washburn just kind of got put on the bottom shelf and forgotten about and this starts to make a lot more sense if we take a look at all of the companies that KMC owns and distributes Washburn hagstrom DigiTech Rhythm Tech Monster Cables Remo Randall Martin guitars JBL Elixir SE Electronics Van Doren dream symbols quick Lock Lee Oscar and Peg Nadel Vic Firth sure Suzuki CAD audio and Lag guitars and those were just the very biggest companies that they own and or distribute that would like named with the logo and everything on their website there was a whole other subsection of less important companies now of course they do not own all of these companies but they do distribute them some of the ones they do own include but are not limited to ampac Randall Remo Vic Firth Ashley audio and for some reason Daisy Rock girl guitars they own a lot of and they distribute even more and I do understand that in order for a system like that to continue to work some things need to take a back seat but why buy a company if you can't keep it alive and they did the same thing with Randall that company is basically shut down too these are Legacy companies that are being run into the ground passively just through neglect you can't pin this onto any one person at all that would be impossible but someone who I feel like is definitely partially at fault is Rudolf schlacher the man who bought out his business partner in 1987 after owning the company for 40 years and then sold it to jam Industries and stepped down here's part of a quote from schlacher from 2009 in music Inc magazine I will put the full quote up on screen if you do want to read it yourself we are pleased to join forces with a strategic partner like jam industries that has a long successful history in the music industry strategic seems like a poor choice of words in retrospect doesn't it or at least I can't seem to figure out what their strategy is Washburn isn't the first company that we've seen die by the death of just being acquired by a company who actually doesn't really care look at Steinberger they were one of if not the first company to mass produce headless guitars and they built them out of not wood but a proprietary blend of much more durable materials including carbon fiber so they pioneered not only the Headless guitar but also the practice of making guitars out of durable carbon fiber Blends which tons of companies are doing nowadays decades later but then boom 1987 Rolls around Gibson buys Steinberger and a few years later ceased production of their guitars they make a couple of models again nowadays but they're incredibly boring they're made of boring cheap Woods they're like four hundred dollars and they haven't even quite kept the original Steinberger body shape this is a regular occurrence it's just incredibly sad I wish someone with a real passion for making guitars and appreciation for washburn's history and Legacy would buy the company and turn it back into what it once was but that just seems unlikely of course the chances of this happening are never zero but I wouldn't hold my breath maybe the next limited batch of Mojo release will say bring Washburn back who knows so thank you for watching I'm sad this video couldn't be longer because there was no one for me to interview but you know such is life big thanks to factor75 for sponsoring this video uh you can see the link and the code to use either in the description or on screen here right now also another big thanks to all of my patreon members their names are scrolling on I don't know which side of me right now uh they support the channel you should too you get all of these benefits weekly extra videos and all of that if you like this video you can watch my most recent one somewhere up here you can sub someone out there if you feel like it I would be on it all my social media is in the description as well thank you see you hit the Bell leave a comment goodbye

Channel: sixstringtv

Views: 16,110

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Id: 94jSH0ImwLM

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023