Ben Elder
From:
La Crescenta, California, USA
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Posted 28 Dec 2004 6:52 pm |
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Volu-Tone was (is*) a brand of LA's Schireson Brothers, who were a retail/wholesale manufacturing concern. Their greatest fame is for having been successfully sued by National/Dobro in the '30s over resonator patents.
According to legend, when Bob Dunn first plugged in (with Bob Wills or was it Milton Brown?) he used a Volu-Tone pickup on a Martin acoustic.
Volu-Tone continued to make lap steels and amps at least into the '40s. SOme of them have peculiar connectors that only work between V-T steels and amps.
Thanks to my own sleuthing to see what kind of connection there might have been between Hermann Weissenborn and Schireson Brothers, I met grandson or great-grandson Gary Schireson, who didn't know anything about his family's instruments, but is now an avid collector. *--The Schireson Brothers retail store in downtown LA continued until the early 1990s when the family sold out to employees who run it now as International House of Music. Gary Schireson is president of Volu-Tone (!), which is an electronics distributor in Simi Valley CA.
Beyond this, ask Andy Volk.
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'69 alZBatross D-10/Weisskonutsens/Reasonhaters/
Perennial Sisyphean Beginner
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