The brand is still quite popular today and has its own fair share of fans and collectors, with the site Silvertone World at the center. According to the Sears Archives, the last Sears items to carry the Silvertone names were TVs and fancy stereo systems. The Silvertone brand was eventually retired by Sears in 1973, but was later acquired by Samick who has been doing some interesting things with classic guitar re-releases. Per Wright, another guitar company called Regal was also tapped to manufacture guitars under the Supertone/Silvertone name. ( ) for both Sears and competitor Montgomery Ward. They also turned to other manufactures to keep up with demand.ĭanelectro produced numerous amps under the Silvertone name before branching out into creating awesome-sounding, inexpensive guitars for Sears and Montgomery Ward. Per Michael Wright’s Guitar Stories: the History of Cool Guitars, Sears went right back to relying on Harmony for their guitars. They still supplied catalog instruments to Sears, though. Harmony was a major player until around 1940, when the company was sold back to Harmony executives and they continued manufacturing their own inexpensive guitars under over 57 different brand names. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Silvertone brand is how many different companies manufactured instruments under the name. The Silvertone name became the face of the Sears guitar- at least from 1915-1972. Radios followed, along with ukuleles and other fretted instruments. After that, Silvertone was the official musical brand of Sears & Roebuck.
It all began with a hand-cranked phonograph in 1915. ( Harmony Database) Tones of Silver: The house brand that may be a bigger icon than Sears in some quarters Sears Silvertone guitars, as shown under their original name, Supertone, in 1938. The guitar was easily accessible for many burgeoning bluesmen of the time and is the subject of adoration among many even today. The popular Stella model was originally an Oscar Schmidt guitar, for instance but became a Harmony manufactured guitar after 1939. By purchasing the brands, but not the factories, Sears sourced the manufacturing to Harmony. Around 1899, instruments produced by a New Jersey luthier named Oscar Schmidt were sold through the catalog, and the brand itself was purchased by Sears in 1939. Harmony wasn’t the only manufacturer of Sears-Roebuck’s catalog instruments, either. Harmony guitars were sold at around $6.00 - $8.00 early in that 1896-1897 catalog and were pretty high quality. Established by Wilhelm Schulz in 1892, Harmony quickly became one of the largest manufacturers of stringed instruments in the world. In their 1897 catalog, Sears-Roebuck showed off their newest American-made guitars-those made by Chicago-based The Harmony Company. The first musical instruments to appear in the catalog were American made guitars with names like “Our Kenwood” and “Our Columbian” and came with an instruction booklet. Fretted instruments were certainly a part of that success-a type of success reminiscent of the company’s later growth as a technology retailer. Previously dealing only in watches (1888), then adding jewelry (around 1890), Sears-Roebuck finally began expanding their catalog into “many new lines” that would help establish them as the mail order juggernaut they’d become. Within the first few years of the publication of their catalog-around 1894-Harmony-made guitars began appearing alongside other fretted instruments in the catalog. Ukuleles weren’t the first time Sears-Roebuck began selling guitars and other fretted instruments. With its close proximity to several manufacturers and the reach of their catalog, it probably made perfect sense for Sears to hop on board the musical instrument trade. The Windy City always played a major role in blues music, but it was also a hub of guitar manufacturing. (via the Harmony guitars website) How Chicago’s sweet Harmony found its way into houses and concert halls around the country
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