Cort Guitars

Cort Guitars (Cor-Tek Corporation) is a South Korean guitar manufacturing company located in Seoul. The company is one of the largest guitar makers in the world, and produces instruments for many other companies. It also has factories in Indonesia and China.

Products manufactured by Cort include electric, acoustic and classical guitars, basses, and ukuleles.

Cort was founded in 1960 as an importer of pianos by Jung-gyu Park, father of current CEO Young-ho Park. 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. At this early stage of the company's history, Soo Doh Piano 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”, like the Stratocaster for Fender or the Les Paul for Gibson. Instead, Cort produces a wide variety of electric guitars, acoustic guitars, acoustic bass guitars, and electric basses.

In addition to the models currently being made, Cort has produced many others, including the "S" series guitars (Stellar, Sterling, Starlite), the "Viva" guitars, "MGM" (Matt Guitar Murphy), "Freedom" bass (Billy Cox), Neil Zaza, Larry Coryell, "Elrick" bass, "J Triggs" (Jim Triggs), "Katana", and "Effector".

Up until 2006, Cort manufactured a line of high quality guitars under the name 'Cort Parkwood'. In 2006, Cort turned Parkwood into a brand of its own and now does not feature the Cort name or logo. This is a brand sold exclusively through big box stores such as Guitar Center. Cort continues to manufacture the Parkwood brand in South Korea although it is printed "Handcrafted in China" inside the guitar body. The Hybrid series is made in Indonesia.

The Cort M-Series is as close to a signature shape as Cort gets across its range. Cort has released a limited production run of MMP series electric guitars from its own custom shop. Somewhere between 25 and 50 of each MMP model were released. These guitars are generally highly regarded and appear to be heavily influenced by higher-end PRS models, in both quality standards and style.

Cort's main production focus is not on Cort-brand guitars, but rather contract work for numerous other companies. Generally, large companies contract Cort to build lower-priced guitars that have that company's brand on them. Ibanez, PRS (SE line), Squier, and G&L Tribute series line of guitars are among the most well-known brands that Cort produces.