The Regal Musical Instrument Company is a former US

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

s company and current

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...

owned by Saga Musical Instruments. Regal was one of the largest manufacturers in the 1930s and became known for a wide range of

resonator A resonator is a device or system that exhibits resonance or resonant behavior. That is, it naturally oscillates with greater amplitude at some frequencies, called resonant frequencies, than at other frequencies. The oscillations in a resonator ...

stringed instruments, including

guitars The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

, mandolins, and

ukuleles The ukulele ( ; from haw, ukulele , approximately ), also called Uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings. The tone and volume of the instrumen ...

. Only resonator guitars are sold under the Regal brand today, with manufacturing in

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic ...

and distribution in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

History

Emil Wulschner, a retailer of

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

, opened his first music instruments factory –"Emil Wulschner & Son" in 1896 to build guitars and mandolins. Products were sold under three brand names: Regal, university and 20th. Century. Wulschner died in 1900, and the new owners renamed the company the "Regal Musical instrument Manufacturing Company" in 1901 and continued using the ''Regal'' name on instruments through 1904. Regal resonator guitar

In 1904, Lyon & Healy purchased rights to the brand Regal. Four years later, the company officially re-introduced the Regal name in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

, establishing their factory there. Lyon & Healy set Regal up as an independent company in 1924. During its first years of existence, Regal only marketed 4-string instruments such as

ukulele The ukulele ( ; from haw, ukulele , approximately ), also called Uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings. The tone and volume of the instrumen ...

s and

tenor guitar The tenor guitar or four-string guitar is a slightly smaller, four-string relative of the steel-string acoustic guitar or electric guitar. The instrument was initially developed in its acoustic form by Gibson and C.F. Martin so that players of ...

s. The production of 6-string guitars would began later. The Regal brand was heavily involved in the production of resonator fretted instruments from their first development until 1941, manufacturing components and bodies for both the National and the

Dobro Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson (guitar company), Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar. ...

companies (Dobro acquiring National in 1934), though the Dopyera brothers still produced the resonator cones for them. The bodies of their

laminated Lamination is the technique/process of manufacturing a material in multiple layers, so that the composite material achieves improved strength, stability, sound insulation, appearance, or other properties from the use of the differing materia ...

bellied guitars were particularly suited to resonator conversion.Regal Musical Instrument Co.
on Lardy's Ukulele Database Regal Blue Comet mandolin front 4

In the early 1930s, Regal had licensed the use of Dobro resonators. When National moved from California to Chicago, Regal acquired the rights to manufacture Dobro instruments. That made Regal become another producer of "house brand" guitars before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Production of resonator guitars ceased in 1941, followed by all fretted instruments in 1954. That same year, Regal closed down as a company, and its rights to the name and assets were sold to the

Harmony Company The Harmony Company is a former guitar manufacturing company that is currently a brand owned by Singapore-based BandLab Technologies. Harmony was, in its heyday, the largest musical instrument manufacturer in the United States. It made many typ ...

. Harmony owned Regal for a brief period so Fender took over the brand in the late 1950s. In 1965, Fender distributed five models of

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

under the ''Regal'' name, as the "exclusive distributors". It is not clear when Fender ceased to commercialise Regal products. In an effort to reintroduce the brand to global markets and focusing on overseas production sources, Saga Musical Instruments acquired the Regal name in 1987 and has steadily produced a complete line of metal and wood body resophonic instruments.The history of the famous Regal guitar
on Jags House website

Brand owners

* Emil Wulschner & Son (1896–1904) * Lyon & Healy (1904–1954) *

(1954–late 1950s) * Fender (1950s–?) * Saga Musical Instruments (1987–present)

References

External links

Regal guitars
on Saga Music

{{Mandolin family instruments Musical instrument manufacturing companies based in Chicago Defunct companies based in Chicago