Washburn Guitars
Few guitar companies have been around as long as Washburn Guitars has. As one of the oldest American guitar manufacturers still in existence today, Washburn Guitars boasts years of industry experience spanning from the 19th century to the development of the Delta Blues movement as well as in contemporary music. Years of heritage and the largely influential user base has made Washburn one of the top guitar brands of today.
The star-studded list of endorsers includes Paul Stanley of KISS, George Lynch, as well as longtime endorser Nuno Bettencourt. Stu Hamm, one of the most prominent names in the electric bass circuit, also has a signature acoustic bass out made by Washburn Guitars. These and many other artists have all sworn by the Washburn name because of their heritage and quality present in all the guitars they make.
History of Washburn Guitars
The original Washburn Company had its start in the streets of Chicago in 1883. The geography of the original office was close in proximity to the Mississippi Delta, which was a prime entry point for many African-Americans at the time. These African-Americans were very musically inclined and with the availability of Washburn guitars, helped pave the way to what would be known as the Delta Blues.
A hotbed of musicians at the time was Maxwell Street, one of the city's oldest residential districts today. The heavily segregated portion of the southern states meant that the African-American slaves at the time had to migrate back up north to Chicago, with Maxwell Street being one of the prime residential districts. When the African-Americans migrated to Maxwell Street, they took along their outdoor music, and helped pioneer the Delta Blues as we know it today.
The invention of the electric guitar helped this company prosper even further into the 20th century. The Washburn Company is also credited as one of the first major guitar companies to have artists fully endorse their guitars for commercial purposes. Some of the greatest guitar players of our time have done endorsements for Washburn guitars such as Dimebag Darrell, Paul Stanley, and Nuno Bettencourt.
Innovations in the field of electric guitars are also where Washburn shines, as the company collaborated with experts in the field to introduce player-oriented developments in guitar technology. One of these is the Buzz Feiten Tuning System, a revolutionary new tempered tuning system which utilizes a compensated saddle and nut to cure the common intonation problems of current production guitars.
Artist Endorsements
As Washburn is often credited with being the first commercial guitar company to offer endorsement contracts to its players, many prominent guitar players have stuck with the company for not just the contract, but for the quality a Washburn guitar has. One of these players is bass giant Stu Hamm, well known for his technical ability as a bassist. His virtuoso skills combined with his signature Washburn Acoustic Bass are established as a force to be reckoned with.
Today, many prominent guitar players continue to recognize the quality and playability of a Washburn guitar. These players include longtime endorser Nuno Bettencourt who comes from the hit band Extreme. Sammy Hagar and Nic Catanese of Black Label Society have both been seen playing Washburn guitars. Roger Waters and Scott Ian of thrash metal giants Anthrax also prefer Washburn guitars when tearing it up at a show.
Washburn Guitar Model Lineup
With over 130 years of experience in creating musical instruments, Washburn has a lineup of guitars guaranteed to jive with the most expressive of blues players to the most hardcore of punk and metal shredders. The latest in solid body guitars, semi-hollow and hollowbody jazz boxes, acoustic guitars, and basses are a testament to a century's worth of guitar manufacturing experience, and quality.
The Idol series of Washburn guitars are one of their staple guitars. Utilizing a solid body design the Idol guitars in Washburn's lineup offer crunchy and fat tones from a pair of humbuckers making them good for anything from jazz to thrash. The Idol series comes in three different models today: the Original Idol, the Idol WIN Series, and the single-cutaway Mighty Idol series for players more at home with a traditional look.
The RX series from Washburn Guitars offers a diverse, double-cutaway design made popular in the age of 80s hair and shred metal. With the RX series, guitarists have a choice between fat humbuckers in the bridge and neck positions or one humbucker paired up with two single coil pickups in the middle and neck position, offering a more diverse tonal range for the player with more than one trick up his or her sleeve. A series of attractive finishes are available for all RX guitars, ranging from mahogany bodies with carved maple tops to lighter basswood bodies.
Washburn Guitars outdoes the RX series of guitars with the XM models, which offer a more extreme double-cutaway design for much easier playing up and down the fretboard. The premium models in the XM lineup feature a Floyd Rose Locking Tremolo system, Sustaniac and Duncan-designed pickups, Grover tuners and a matte black finish both on the body and hardware. All of this is made in the U.S. Custom Shop for optimal quality and playability.
For players looking for a more mellow sound, Washburn also offers some semi-hollow body and full hollow body jazz boxes in the HB and Jazz Series of guitars, respectively. As these kinds of guitars also helped shape the sound of the blues as we know it today, these Washburn guitars also come with player-oriented embellishments for ultimate quality and playability.