Is Washburn next?

[Dlew919]

I might have considered Dean and Hamer to be "it" brands back in the late 70's and early 80's when they first came on the scene and were still being run by the founders. I've never thought of Washburn as an "it" brand. Not sure I'd really put any of them on par with G&L.

Washburn is a bit different as it was originally the premium brand of the Lyon and Healey company, which at one stage was the biggest manufacturer of musical instruments in the US. The brand was sold off at one point. So it’s a little different to dean and Hamer.

 

[ggvicviper]

I might have considered Dean and Hamer to be "it" brands back in the late 70's and early 80's when they first came on the scene and were still being run by the founders. I've never thought of Washburn as an "it" brand. Not sure I'd really put any of them on par with G&L.

I didn't mean to imply that any of them were on par with G&L, but I also wouldn't consider G&L to be an "it" brand. They were too cult classic to be; not enough big players in any one genre or time period playing them. Really, none of them were ever "it" brands aside from maybe Hamer, and that was ages ago.

However, Washburn, like G&L, did have a few shorter term high profile endorsers. G&L had Tom Hamilton for a little while, plus Dee Murray and a few others endorsed them in their early years. Washburn had Rudy Sarzo and Pat Badger briefly, and I know during the unplugged craze, they had Darryl Jones, Michael Rhodes and several others endorsing their AEBGs.

 

[SoonerBill]

I had a very nice Washburn Kona wood acoustic guitar back when I was trying to learn guitar. Loved it.
I looked at Guitar Center online. A few electric guitar models. Lots of acoustics. Many of them had some level of "Limited inventory" or such message.

 

[atquinn]

Washburn, Dean, Hamer and a lot of "it" brands that seemed everywhere in the 90s seem to be in steep decline if not dead already. There's just so much competition.

Hamer died years ago with the closing of the New Hartford plant. The name might still be around, but that's meaningless.

 

[J Wilson]

I always wanted one of those AB acoustic basses with the slit sound holes in a five. Maybe one day, they were really nice.

 

[EdwardofHuncote]

Washburn is a bit different as it was originally the premium brand of the Lyon and Healey company, which at one stage was the biggest manufacturer of musical instruments in the US. The brand was sold off at one point. So it’s a little different to dean and Hamer.

Thank you. Someone needed to put it into perspective... Lyon & Healy were making some very nice instruments in Chicago long before George & Leo came along. Companies are started. Brands succeed for a while, then falter. They get sold to other companies. Sometimes they reappear. So it was with Washburn. Who knows yet about G&L. There will countless more to come and go.

Here's an original George Washburn 1897 Style, 223 model. I've had it for years.

 

[brianrost]

They faded into obscurity making those cheap mediocre korean basses the Lyons and the XB’s

Washburn is one of those companies that went under, then someone bought the rights to the name and started selling imported instruments. No different than Danelectro, Supro, and Dean. Their marketing tries to hype it as some unbroken history, but that’s not the case. The Washburn we think of today didn’t exist until 1977. There was some limited production of high-end and “custom shop” instruments in the USA in the 1990s, the rest has always ben imports.

Read about the convoluted history of the name here at Wikipedia.

 

[ClassicJazz]

Washburn is owned by JAM Industries which has a lot of brands under their umbrella. If they get killed off that would a corporate move. I assume they have more capital to work with than G&L had.

 

[JC BASS 91]

I bought one of the Bantam XB-200 basses back in the late 90s and really liked it. I did replace the pickups with Dimarzios, Used it on a few songs of the album I recorded with some friends. Got rid of it about 10 years later when I thinned out my herd of basses.

 

[BargeOn]

I always wanted one of those AB acoustic basses with the slit sound holes in a five. Maybe one day, they were really nice.

One of these? This one is from about '96 and still going strong.
It came in a 5 and I got to play a fretless once as well.

There was also a very nice model one pricepoint higher that did not have the "Florentine cutaway", there is one pictured in that old book of John Entwistle's bass collection.

 

[Root 5]

There’s a guy on YouTube doing bass covers. He plays a Washburn Taurus T24 and sounds great.

 

[Snibborwocky]

I think since Nuno in venturing into his own guitar company now, the only thing really left at Washburn is acoustic guitars more or less. Nuno's N4 was basically holding that company together if I had to guess. Basses are/have been non-existent for a while now and I'm not even sure how they survived this long honestly. Would not surprise me if they folded in the very near future.

 

[Altitude]

Washburn is a bit different as it was originally the premium brand of the Lyon and Healey company, which at one stage was the biggest manufacturer of musical instruments in the US. The brand was sold off at one point. So it’s a little different to dean and Hamer.

This sounds right. Washburn began life as a craft builder and was sold to a conglomerate. Much like Schecter, though the current Schecter seems to have done a better job of marketing and co-positioning with retailers.

Someone said “they will fail like Samick” - Samick has definitely not failed, they are one of the largest private-label builders in the world, similar to Cort, and build basses that are sold under very many household names. Ironically, Samick was behind the Washburn revival in the 80s/90s that we’re all thinking of. They manufactured just about all of the Washburn instruments up to the mid-2000s, at which point Washburn started to use other manufacturers as well.

 

[Jeff Hughes]

I sold so many washburn guitars when I worked at a music store. Their acoustics were pretty nice for the pricepoint, but they always seemed so heavily coated in poly that the sound suffered. A lot of them used to ship with Grover tuners.

But are they just a zombie brand anyhow? I have barely seen one in a store in years.

 

[Doctor Morbius]

I hope this recent downturn doesn't affect Esteban Guitars!!

 

[ggvicviper]

Ironically, Samick was behind the Washburn revival in the 80s/90s that we’re all thinking of.

I think Samick was less used in the 80's (or maybe prominently used at the end of the 80's), as a lot of what we associate with Washburn's Korean and later Chinese/Vietnamese instruments was more the 90's. Washburn branding was being used for MIJ instruments for much of the 80s.

 

[JC BASS 91]

I hope this recent downturn doesn't affect Esteban Guitars!!

I have a guitar player friend that has one! He told me when I saw it, "Yeah, I keep it around because my girlfriend bought it for me thinking she was getting me a great guitar. I have never had the heart to tell her." Then the girlfriend died, and now he won't ever part with it.

 

[ggvicviper]

I hope this recent downturn doesn't affect Esteban Guitars!!

I had to look this up; that's hilarious. I didn't ever watch any shop at home stuff, nor was I into guitar when that was a thing, so this went flying over my head like a 747.

 

[lowfreqgeek]

A few cool models aside, I haven't considered Washburn a serious contender for several decades. They made some good stuff here and there, but they've just kinds been floating along for a long, long time.

 

[jsixties]

It would definitely be very bad news if a brand with such a long history were to disappear. I was never really impressed by any of the basses Washburn made, not even those Status Series 1000 models from the '80s that were licensed with Status pickups, but one day I came across this semi-hollow AB-90 from 2005, and I have to say it was spectacular. It was beautifully built, with craftsmanship and details worthy of a much more expensive instrument. You could get an incredibly low action with zero fret buzz, and the punch and warmth from those humbuckers were simply amazing. I eventually sold it because it was just too big, and reaching the first fret was an odyssey. What a great bass that was.