The H. Weissenborn Company: Historic Los Angeles Guitar Maker

The H. Weissenborn Company

The H. Weissenborn Company, based in Los Angeles during the 1920s and 1930s, was the workshop and small-scale factory through which Hermann Weissenborn’s designs reached musicians across America. Operating under the name “H. Weissenborn Co. Ltd.,” the firm was never a large corporation but rather a tightly run workshop employing skilled woodworkers and producing a steady output of handcrafted instruments.

The company’s signature products were hollow-neck Hawaiian steel guitars, offered in four main “styles” that ranged from plain utilitarian models to ornate instruments with elaborate rope bindings and decorative inlays. Most were built from koa wood imported from Hawaii, prized both for its striking appearance and for the warm, sustained tone it gave the guitars. Alongside the Weissenborn-branded instruments, the factory also produced guitars under other labels, such as Kona, as well as a limited number of ukuleles, mandolins, and Spanish-style guitars.

At its height in the early to mid-1920s, the Weissenborn Company instruments were distributed nationally, with partnerships allowing them to be sold through music shops and teaching studios across the United States. Their popularity coincided with the peak of Hawaiian music’s mainstream appeal, when steel guitar was featured prominently in popular recordings and performances.

The rise of resonator guitars in the late 1920s and the arrival of electric instruments in the 1930s gradually reduced demand for wooden lap steels. Production declined through the Depression years, and the company ceased operations after Hermann Weissenborn’s death in 1937.

Although short-lived, the H. Weissenborn Company left an enduring mark. Its guitars are now highly prized by collectors and players, admired not only as beautiful artifacts of the Hawaiian music boom but as timeless instruments whose sound continues to inspire musicians a century later.