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Talent (Gig bags) See --> Kingstar International Enterprise
Technics (Organs, keyboards & synthesisers) See --> Panasonic
Theodor Kreutzer (Classical string instruments) See --> Grover-Trophy Music Company
Thomas H. McKinney III
USA based gentleman that sold a simple but very effective high end stainless steel capo for guitar and banjo whose basic design has been widely copied. It appears that despite designing them he only actually manufactured the capos himself from from ca 1975 till the early 1980's but after that they were mostly made for him or under license by a number of makers including for a time Frank Neat. The basic design of a capo like this actually pre-dates the McKkinney design by a century but the difference lies in the metal used, the stainless steel is much stiffer than the brass usually used in such models and that allows the capo to be used with less pressure on the strings.
Mr. McKinney stopped selling capos in the early 90's but are now being manufactured by Phill Elliott, but a large contingent of USA manufacturers make similar capos including Huber Banjos? and Showcase which was one of the companies that made capos for Mr. McKinney earlier.
Three S See --> Suzuki Violin Co.
Titan (Drums & percussion) See --> Grover-Trophy Music Company
Top Strings See --> Rotosound
Torque (Acoustic guitar amplifiers) See --> Enrique Keller
Tribal Planet Ltd.
Company based in Slough, Berkshire, England that was originally founded in 2001 as Ablehand Ltd by David Wright and Philip Sutcliffe, both former Hohner employees, but changed its name to Tribal Planet Ltd. the year after. Manufactured multilayer padded soft polyester gig bags and instrument cases for all kinds of musical instruments from guitars to bodhrans that they called Gigbag Cases, these were designed to have the weight of a soft bag while offering the protection that a hard case would offer. Initially the interest in the company's products was high since it was a pretty unique solution.
In 2004 the company formed a new company to sell harmonicas, it was called Tribal Planet Harmonica Company Ltd., it was based in Birtley in Tyne & Wear, England which I gather was the actual physical address of the company rather than the one in Slough that the original company remained listed in. In 2005 the new company introduced a range of 19 harmonicas under the Planetone brand, these were Chinese made like their gig bags and based on existing design that had been sold in the East under a variety of names but featured some improvements like nickel plated phosphor bronze reeds for corrosion resistance (some peoples mouth water is very acidic) and other minor improvements, not a surprise considering the owners background history with Hohner. The harmonicas received mixed reviews but were generally fairly favourably received.
The company was very active in 2007 and managed to get a distribution deal with Fender in the USA and later that year their harmonica range was introduced to the USA with much fanfare and an endorsement from American player Johnny Mars, in addition the company claimed to be working on a revolutionary new harmonica to be released in 2008.
The company went quiet during the summer of 2008 and no new products were released that year, their main distributor Music Essentials seems to have disappeared that year as well but it is not known if that had any effect on the company, but by that time a number of competitors had shown up with products similar to their Gigbag Cases, noticeably their former distributor Fender is currently selling guitar bags with very similar basic design as the Tribal Planet product, but it is not known if Fender decided to clone their products and that affected the company or if it was the other way around and Fender felt it had to supply a replacement product after the demise of TP. In the latter half of that same year a number of consignments of their Planetone harmonicas were offered to wholesalers with huge discounts and both Tribal Planet and TB Harmonica Company were dissolved in July 2009. Planetone harmonicas have since then appeared on in the catalogue of Scottish musical instrument wholesaler Steve Clinkscale Music at very keen prices but it is not known if they have taken over the brand or if these are stock remains.
Resources : -- The companys Myspace page, still open although not active -- Facebook page - ditto.
Tru Grip (USA - guitar stands 80's) See --> Evetscorp
Tune Slave (USA - electronic tuners 80's) See --> Evetscorp
Twinkle See --> Shar Products (Classical string instrument beginners packs/kits - 80's & 90's)
Urban Safari See --> Artistic Cover Products (Instrument cases - USA)
Valdesta (Acoustic & electronic pianos) See --> GTRC Services
Veillette-Citron Inc.
A company formed in Brooklyn, New York, USA in 1976 by Joseph O. Veillette and Harvey S. Citron. The two had met when they were studying architecture, Mr Veillette had taken acoustic guitar building classes with Michael Gurian (who later founded Gurian Instruments) while Mr Citron was a self-taught guitar and pickup builder who had been inspired to start winding pickups after visiting Dan Armstrong’s West Village, NY shop. They started collaborating in 1974, in 1975 they started selling a neck-through body guitar on a small scale locally that was successful enough for them to consider incorporating as a company and manufacturing them in a serial fashion, in 1976 they exhibited at the summer NAMM show, the reception was good enough to encourage them to purchasing equipment and starting a company and by December the company was producing instruments.
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The electronics were passive but cleverly wired, the two pickups are humbuckers that were designed and hand wound by Mr Citron himself, they were offered with two or three coil taps, and on top of an overall volume control each pickup has an individual volume and tone controls, in addition to a phase reversal switch all the pots are push out (push-pull) switches that serve a dual function that alongside the dual or triple ouput taps allow for quite a complex choice of sounds and in addition much of their instruments are stereo wired. Tuning hardware appears to be high end variants of Schaller while on early instruments all the other bits were custom made out of lacquered brass, but on post-1979 models only the bridge and tailpieces remained in their the custom form, the rest became commercially available hardware.
In 1978 the company introduced a line of acoustic guitars, for some reason the acoustics are never mentioned in company histories and unlike the electric products these seem genuinely rare, but at the same time V-C also started to offer a 8 string bass that for a short while became very popular. By this time the company was offering their electric instruments in a variety of body woods including Indian Rosewood, Koa and Walnut.
Verve (Drums & percussion) See --> GTRC Services
Vibra-Bell (Brass parts for instruments) See --> Grover-Trophy Music Company
Visiv Ltd.
A company founded in 2006 by Martin Dawe and owned by Neuratron and was based in Canterbury, Kent, England. Took over the rights to the OCR notation program SharpEye from Graham Jones who had been developing it since 1996. However no further development of the program was ever carried out by the company, by 2010 it had become dormant and it was dissolved in 2011. You can still buy the software and the website is still up but it is questionable if any support is available , and the site has seen no updates since they buyout . The scanning engine from SharpEye is now used in products from Neuraton and a supported German version is available from Columbus Soft.
Homepage: http://www.visiv.co.uk
Vito See --> Conn-Selmer
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