Royalist Ukes

Western

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Hey everyone,

I determined that the baritone uke that I have is Royalist Baritone Uke. I didn't know if that existed, but I did some research and apparently it does....or at least did. So my question to all of you is, Does anyone else have any sort of Royalist Uke?? Does anyone know anything about them and how low or high quality they are? It seems to be pretty decent to be, but Im a complete newb here. So....Anyone?
 
Can you post some photos? With a name like Royalist, it likely was made by one of the bigger factories, and branded for another company of business. Harmony did a lot of this kind of thing. If that is the case, it could be good quality, or pretty cheap, and you could get more help here by showing us the specific ukulele. Either way, if you like the way it plays/sounds, it is a good ukulele!
 
I would guess it is solid wood, not laminate, but that is only a guess. How does it sound?
 
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It sounds pretty good, and from the look and feel of it, it's solid wood. Has anyone else heard of the brand?
 
Bumpity bump bump bump. Has anyone even remotely heard of it? Maybe Royalist is the model.......Any thoughts? Any at all?
 
I've not come across one branded Royalist before (I will have to add it to my database of brands) But I have seen the Ukulele lots of times before. Its not made by Harmony they did make a similar instrument but it had a flat top to the headstock, different tuners and a different bridge.. and smaller fret markers and...
I not 100% sure who did make them but I made a page for them on my database http://database.ukulelecorner.org.uk/site/ukulelemakers/multi/us-baritones if you would like to see some with alternative brand names (and I would like to add the photo you yours here to if that is ok?). The best information I have on the maker at the moment is thet is was made by the United Guitar Co. of New Jersey - these are the people who brought the old Oscar Schmidt Factory when Oscar Schmidt went bust in 1939 - but I have no definite proof yet so it still might be from Taiwan?
 
Hmmm...Yeah it could be. And yes, you may use that picture. It could be from Thailand....but to the beginning and inexperienced "uker" as I am, it doesn't feel as cheap as most products I get from Taiwan. It has a pretty solid sound, and doesn't feel cheap at all. Only issue I have with it is that the G string won't stay in tune. The 3rd string peg is a slightly different color than the rest of them, so it might have been changed and there may enlie the problem. Anyway....Im still searching and trying to come up with some bit of history on them.
 
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Being the sad Act that I am and as I was adding Roylist to my databaseI did some further research on the brand and this is what I found
Royalist is the house brand for RCA Victor and they were selling Guitars under this brand name for quite a while The guitars are not uncommon and some of them used the same headstock logo so its definitly the same brand. As RCA Victor was not a manufacturer they had the instruments made by a number of people over the years. Regal made instruments for them in the 1930's (but this Baritones production apears to date from shortly before Regal sold out to Harmony to after Harmony stopped production so Regal aren't the maker) Guyatone certainly made electric guitars for them in the second half of the 1960's and may have have made other instruments for them and may have started working with them earlier? And a maker I have not come across before, Egmond was certainly making guitars for them in the 1950's Egmond was a Dutch instrument maker (so lets throw another country of origin into the mix) but from what I could see Egmonds guitars (even the ones branded Royalist) all had a fairly distinctive headstock that looks nothing like the headstock on this Uke and though Egmond made Banjos and Mandolins as well as guitars I could see nothing about them making Ukuleles at all?
 
I opened the wrong can of worms. Or in this case...Ukelele. Wait it wasn't in a case. LOL. Anyway, let me read through that again a couple more times and see if I can wrap my head around that.
 
Okay.....I think I got it now. Where did you find that Regal sold out to Harmony? I found that Harmony went out of business in 1975. I found that in the later years, they reduced their output a great bit and started focusing on student model guitars sold through JCPenny(Weird right?). RCA Victor Records seems to be the ticket to the history. Im going to check that out a bit more.
 
It pretty well documented that Regal sold out its factories and brand names to Harmony in 1954 - there never really got back in their stride after wwII. I think part of this deal was the JC Penny contract but its not that weird other than Harmony was brought by Sears Roebuck in 1916 and was owned by them for the rest of their existence to 1975 So I suppose its weird that Harmony was making instrument for the parent company rivals though with the rise of Far Eastern imports at the time I suppose any business was good business for Harmony

To recap on the Ukulele history
The brand name Royalist was owned by RCA Victor who are a music publisher (they generally like to put this first as their business) and record label They had Instrument made for them over the years by a lot of different companies.
My best guess for the maker is the United Guitar Co. of NJ but it is possible it was made overseas
It definitely wasn't made by Harmony or Kay and I don't think it was made by Vega (though they did sell a version)
The Ukulele is suppose to be quite well made - at least as good as the Harmony equivalent - though it doesn't usually sell for as much because people haven't heard of the brand name before (If you get one of the Vega ones they usually sell for more)
If you were to sell it on ebay you could reasonably expect to get $100 - $200 for it but I would keep it and learn to play ballads on it
 
Im definitely going to keep it, no doubt. Thanks for all the help. So, it is a pretty good quality uke?
 
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