Harmony

Harmony (Sears and Roebuck)
The Harmony Company was founded in 1892 by Wilhelm Schultz, (a former employee of Lyon & Healy)

In 1916, The Harmony Company was bought by the large Chicago based mail order firm Sears, Roebuck and Co., who had a plan to corner the Ukulele market. This never really came about but The Harmony Company went on to become the largest producer of stringed instruments in the US, selling some 250,000 pieces in 1923 and 500,000 in 1930, including all kinds of Guitars, Banjos, and Mandolins.

In the late 1930s Harmony bought the brand names La Scala, Stella, and Sovereign from the bankrupt Oscar Schmidt Co. to add to the Harmony and Sears brand names, Harmony, Playtime, Silvertone, Supertone, Monterey, Vogue, Valencia, Vagabond and Wings. There were also endorses like Johnny Marvin and Roy Smeck whose names were also used to brand instruments, plus there was also a lot of largely unbranded instruments sold through the Sears Roebuck catalogue. As well as distributing their own brands they made instruments for a lot of the big US distributors like P'IMCo, Metropolitan Music Co, and even some UK distributors like Beare & Son, to brand.

The Harmony Company hit a post war peak in 1964-1965, selling 350,000 instruments, but far eastern competition led to the company’s demise 10 years later. Between 1945 and 1975, Harmony had mass produced about ten million guitars, but finally even though in 1954 they had taken over Regal, their biggest rival up to that point, they were no longer competitive with the Far East. It is likely that before the closure of the Chicago factory, some of the final Harmony branded products, particularly the lower end ones, were produced in the Far East rather than Chicago.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. continued on after the demise of Harmony and are still going today. For a while after the Harmony factory had gone they had Japanese or Taiwanese import Ukuleles branded Harmony and later just Sears Roebuck.

From certainly the 1980's on they no longer branded instruments themselves and just sold other peoples instruments in their catalogue. However in 2015 with a resurgence in interest of the old brand names on electric Guitars and the resurgence of Ukuleles in general they reintroduced the Slvertone name again for use on low end Chinese made instruments; Guitars and Soprano Ukuleles

Other Harmony labels can help date the Ukulele too, I'm not sure of the exact date of change but as a general rule before WWII they had a Gold and Red decal label and after they had a Gold and Green one. Another after the war sign is the use of plastic fretboards. Harmony, I believe came up with this idea in the 50's on the back of the rise of the plastic Ukulele, (which they to tried to cash in on, with their Modern Bali Range) or possibly remembering Globes experiments with the Tru-Fret range. The other thing that started at this time and was copied in the far east was the distinctive "Sharks Tooth" tuners

Another innovation they were proud of in the late 20's was an aeroplane shaped bridge they called the "Aero bridge" and claimed it protected Guitars against the soundboard sagging at the bridge? It was more likely just a gimmick though during the period of pioneering aviation along with their wings range of Ukuleles. It was also a feature on the Johnny Marvin Professional Tenors in the beginning or their production but it was phased out for a more normal bridge well before the end of production.