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The Euterpe and Troubadours were offered until 1899. 7107 Troubadour, which added white celluloid binding to the top. The bridge was the same as on the Euterpe. Unlike the Euterpe, this had a “convex” or ovaled ebonized fingerboard (5/7/10 dots), and a colored ring rosette. 7106 “Troubadour,” at $8.65, was another standard with an orange top, this time made of solid mahogany. This cost? $5.75, with money-back guarantee! The pin bridge had little elevated squares on the wings, typical of some Harmony bridges. The Euterpe had an 18-fret ebonized fingerboard, and our telltale three dots at five, seven and 10. The neck material was also unspecified, but often these had cedro or “Spanish cedar” necks, a wood like mahogany. The top was bound with a light/dark block marquetry purfling, as was the soundhole. 7102 “Euterpe,” a standard-sized guitar with an orange top (wood unspecified) and a body of quartersawn oak. Seen in the ’97 Sears catalog was early Harmony made guitars like the No. These were mostly small bodied parlor guitars which were popular at the time. By 1897, Sears was doing business with the fledgling Harmony company offering new guitar models. Since Sears was formally a watch and jewelry company these were the first guitars they marketed for sale. When Sears, Roebuck and Company entered into the picture, they were selling the exact same guitars in their catalog. Ward’s was selling Lyon & Healy-made Washburn guitars and probably some low-end Bohmann guitars that featured birch wood with fake wood grains. Likely, these guitars were from German makers. Montgomery Ward pledged to sell only American-made guitars in their 1894 catalog, which they claimed were of superior manufacture, made “scientifically,” and guaranteed not to warp or split…as long as you didn’t use steel strings! They abandoned the sale of imported guitars because they could not withstand the climatic changes they were subject to in the New World. Chicago was the home of the mail-order merchandise business, which played a major role in the dissemination of the guitars across America and the rise of the guitar makers there. Due to location, Chicago became the supplier of goods for the Heartland of America. Chicago was at the transportation crossroads of the nation as transcontinental railroad lines and sitting on the Great Lakes, and just over 100 or so miles from the mighty Mississippi River. Harmony and its early main competitor, Oscar Schmidt, of New Jersey, continued to favor use of the 10th fret long after most other major manufacturers settled on the ninth fret (some, like the Larson Brothers, also continued to use 10th-fret markers).īy 1894 there were some 40 employees working at Harmony as Chicago was a hotbed of industrial manufacturing offering opportunity to European immigrants pouring into the country. The guitar of the 1890s was either used primarily for vocal accompaniment or as a continuo instrument in mandolin and banjo orchestras of the time. Mandolins had position markers at the 10th fret. Basically, markers at the 10th fret, versus the ninth (found on a few guitars and banjos before the 1880s), was a strategy employed by guitar makers who intended to sell their instruments into the immensely popular mandolin orchestras at the time. Very likely they would also have had three dots at the fifth, seventh, and 10th frets. Probably not too many survived, but likely they were small acoustics that used with gut strings, and glued-on bridges. Very little information is known about the earliest Harmony-made guitars.
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In 1892, Schultz left Lyon & Healy and, with four employees, started Harmony in a loft of the Edison Building located at Washington and Market Streets in Chicago, later the site of the Civic Opera House. Knapp was bought out by a large instrument manufacturing giant, Lyon & Healy, and Schultz became foreman of the drum operation. Schultz, a mechanic, came to Chicago and got work at the Knapp Drum Company. Wilhelm Schultz, founder of Harmony on left with factory worker and manager