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Handcrafting guitars in his Annapolis attic and befriending roadies to gain access to the world’s most renowned players, Paul Reed Smith founded the acronymic company in 1985. Here’s a list of the top ten family-owned guitar companies, from most recently founded to oldest: By David Blaikie – Flickr: $6000 Guitar, CC BY 2.0, PRS Guitars Country: USA Founded: 1985 Interestingly, the electric guitar was invented (or at least first marketed) by a family business. Many of the world’s most iconic guitar brands are family businesses. Quality guitar manufacture, or luthiery, is a traditional craft requiring an extraordinarily high level of skill. Despite music charts, largely dominated by heavily produced, electronically generated tunes, a cursory exploration of YouTube confirms the enduring popularity of guitars across genders and geographies. Mass media reflects this initiative for a more diverse appeal. Guitar companies are expanding their target audience to include both genders and all people around the world. Music industry insiders point to another, possibly more sustainable and certainly more compelling reason for the instrument’s rebound. That document correlates guitar purchasing habits to discretionary income, which is on the rise.
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Market research firm IBISWorld reported modest guitar manufacturing growth over the past five years and is projecting the trend to accelerate through to 2022. However, there are indications that the recent downturn may be cyclical, not chronic. The instrument has fallen out of favour, and manufacturers have faced steadily declining revenues – from 2008 to 2017, sales dropped over 30 per cent annually. There is little place for guitar playing in today’s chart-topping singles. The past two decades of pop music, defined by a shift towards electronic instrumentation, have not been kind to the guitar.