Well-known luthiers, including archtop builder Jim Triggs and bass builder Gary Curbow, have designed instruments for Cort as well. Currently, a Cort GE27V in very good condition is valued between $400 and $600-not bad for a Korean-made Les Paul copy from the 1980s.Ĭort has evolved from mainly producing copies to introducing several of their own original designs. Though Cort has produced thousands and thousands of guitars, I don’t see a lot of them for sale in the U.S.
#RARE CORT BASS GUITARS SERIAL#
Without a serial number, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact year of manufacture, but you could always try removing the rear control cover and inspect the potentiometers for any date codes.
You’re correct that it should have a pickguard. According to the 1984 catalog, specifications included a flame-maple top (though it looks more like a walnut top in your photos), set neck, triple-ply celluloid top and back binding, a bound neck and headstock, abalone headstock inlay, a pair of Powersound exposed humbuckers, and a “violin” finish.
#RARE CORT BASS GUITARS SERIES#
Your guitar appears to be a GE27V model that was produced in the early to mid ’80s as part of Cort’s Traditional Series (found in both the 19 Cort catalogs). The Cort-branded line of guitars is unique in that it’s one of the few brand names that owns its manufacturing facility overseas. Since Cort has produced Les Paul guitars for Epiphone, it’s no surprise they’ve manufactured Cort-branded Les Paul copies. They currently build guitars for numerous manufacturers and trademarks including Epiphone, Ibanez, G&L Tribute Series, Parkwood, and Schecter. Since then, Cort and Cor-Tek have been used interchangeably, but in the U.S., we typically refer to the company as “Cort.”)Ĭort quickly became one of the largest, overseas house-brand manufacturers in the 1970s, when so much production shifted away from the U.S. (Along the line, Cor-Tek began using the Cort name on their own instruments while keeping the Cor-Tek name for the company and factory. The Yoo-Ah name later changed to Cor-Tek, Park bought the company from Westheimer, and Westheimer went on to found Westheimer Corporation, which distributed Cort guitars in the U.S.
In 1973, Westheimer founded the Yoo-Ah company in South Korea along with Yung H. Some of these trademark/brand names included Cortez, Kingston, Pearl, Teisco, and Silvertone. I can tell you now that your guitar was made in South Korea, which is one of the higher-regarded Asian countries for guitar manufacturing.īack in the 1960s, importer Jack Westheimer was distributing guitars from Japan in the U.S. It’s always interesting what you might end up receiving in a gear exchange, right? What you have is clearly a Les Paul copy, which won’t seem unusual once we peer into Cort’s history and see who they’ve made guitars for in the past. Could you give me some more information on this guitar? Does it have any monetary value at all? The pickguard is missing, and the brass nut is not original either. I was told this guitar was made in the late 1970s, but I couldn’t find any information about it, and there’s no serial number. market.I recently acquired an old Cort guitar as part of a gear exchange.
#RARE CORT BASS GUITARS HOW TO#
But how to show it? He needed a guitar to make an impact on the U.S. By Westheimer’s own assessment, it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that they felt quality was at a competitive level. However, as you might expect, this quality achievement did not happen overnight. Today they are one of the world’s top guitarmakers, and many Cort guitars are quite simply excellent instruments. He took his Japanese Cortez guitars to the Peninsula in 1973, partnering with Yung H. There’s a whole lot more to this story that we don’t have time to get into here, but, long story short, Jack transferred from pioneering guitars in Japan to pioneering guitars in Korea. Jack’s name, unlike Leo or Orville, is probably not on most guitar fan’s lips, but he brought us Teisco (and other brand) guitars from Japan at a time when most folks in America didn’t think much about products from the Orient. Well, it’s always best to go to the source when you have a mystery (if you can), so I called Jack Westheimer to get the true story about my find.
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