Cort

Cort is a Korean guitar maker with a distribution history that reaches back to Japan: Jack Westheimer distributed Japanese-built guitars in the United States from the early 1960s, and in 1973 he and Yung H. Park founded the Yoo-Ah company in South Korea, which became Cor-Tek and later Cort Musical Instruments. Park eventually bought the company from Westheimer, and the first Cort-branded guitars appeared in 1982.

In 1984 Cort began building headless guitars with designs licensed from Ned Steinberger, for its own brand and for brands like Hohner and Kramer. Its early models were mostly copies of popular American designs, chiefly the Stratocaster, but in recent years Cort has moved to all-original models.

Cort owns its manufacturing plant in Korea, an unusual position among guitar brands, and also builds instruments in Indonesia and China. It has been a contract manufacturer for other labels, among them Epiphone, Ibanez, G&L and Schecter. Guitar Radar follows Cort's own releases and its OEM news.