Cort Guitars
 |
|
| Private Company | |
| Industry | musical instruments |
| Founded | 1973 (as "Yoo-Ah company") |
| Founder |
Jack Westheimer, Young H. Park |
| Headquarters | 660 Dungchon 3 Dong Gangseo-gu, Seoul 157-030 South Korea |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
| Products |
Electric guitar Bass guitar Steel-string acoustic guitar |
| Brands | Cort Guitars |
| Website | www.cortguitars.com |
Cort Guitars (Cor-Tek) is a guitar manufacturer centered in South Korea. The company is one of the largest guitar makers in the world, and produces instruments for many other companies. They have factories in Indonesia, Korea and China.
The Cort company, as its current incarnation, was founded in 1960 as an importer of pianos by current CEO Young Park's father. At this time, the company was called Soo Doh Piano. The business slowly evolved from a piano importer to a manufacturer and sales division then finally into a guitar manufacturer in 1973. At this early stage of the company's history, Soo Doh was strictly an OEM supplier to other foreign brand name companies. The company eventually changed its name to Cort Musical Instruments, focused on guitars as it became much more proficient at it than producing pianos and released the first Cort-branded guitars in 1982. Cort began production of headless guitars in 1984 with designs exclusively licensed from Ned Steinberger for Cort's own brand as well as for brands like Hohner and Kramer. This development helped bring the Cort name to the mainstream electric guitar market and attracted the attention of other well-known brand name companies seeking contract guitar manufacturers in Korea.
Cort does not have a model of guitar that could be called their “signature,” like Fender and the or Gibson and the Les Paul. Instead, Cort produces a very large line of guitars to fit different guitarists and genres of music. Cort produces a wide variety of electric guitars, acoustic guitars, acoustic bass guitars, and electric basses, with the main emphasis being on producing a good product at a competitive price.
In addition to the models currently being made, Cort has produced many others, including the S series guitars (Stellar, Sterling, Starlite), the Viva guitars, MGM (Matt Guitar Murphy), Freedom bass (Billy Cox), Neil Zaza, Larry Coryell, Elrick bass, J Triggs (Jim Triggs), Katana, and Effector. Several of the earliest Corts were direct copies of popular models such as the Stratocaster.
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Wikipedia