Cort Guitars (a subsidiary of Cor-Tek Corporation) is a South Korean guitar manufacturing company located in Seoul. It was founded by Jung-gyu Park in 1973. The company is one of the largest guitar makers in the world, and produces instruments for many other companies.
Besides its native South Korea, the company has factories in Indonesia and China. Products manufactured by Cor-Tek include electric, acoustic and classical guitars, basses, and ukuleles.
History[]
Cort was founded in 1960 as an importer of pianos by current CEO Young Park's father. At that 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.[1] 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 specific model of guitar that could be called its "signature", rather they produce a wide variety of styles.
Sources[]
- ↑ Koenig, Kate; Review: Cort Gold-Edge Acoustic-Electric Guitar; Acoustic Guitar magazine; July 25, 2021; archived July 2021