We thought we’d take some time to share what’s going on at First Quality these days. Over the years folks who’ve been to our showroom have always commented when coming through our front door about how the place has changed from visit to visit. That continues to be true as we find ourselves embracing even more changes both in the products we will be selling and the overall look of our physical location where we do our business.
As everyone knows the name Sullivan is synonymous with five string banjos. Our founder Bill Sullivan began this business in 1970 as a hobby in his home and some 40 years later we find ourselves in our current location where we still build banjos and do custom work.
The Sullivan Banjo Company shares our Trade Port Drive location and will be one of the areas where folks will be noticing some changes. We’ll be enhancing the current banjo room and adding some additional production space devoted to the banjos we build. Enhancements in our production capabilities with the addition of more CNC technology and a greatly improved and enlarged spray booth will increase our productivity while maintaining and improving quality.
On the retail side here at First Quality we have decided to return to our bluegrass roots. In an ever changing market, we tried to broaden the scope of our business to include a wider inventory and found after some time that the right thing to do would be to focus our resources on the foundation that the company had grown upon. The Sullivan Banjo will be the core along with going back to a broader selection of Martin guitars along with mandolins. Plans are to give the customer a wide selection of price points in the guitars and mandolins and have those instruments on hand in our showroom so the choices will be there for our customers. We are in progress on making the necessary changes in our showroom to make this a reality during the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2012.
We’ll be passing along updates over the upcoming weeks on the progress of these changes, if you find you are in the area stop in and see us.
We’re proud to welcome another owner to the Sullivan Banjo family! Chris Hogue of Bargersville, IN picked up his Sullivan Vintage-35 banjo today in our retail showroom. This particular V-35 is a Mahogany model and is one of the first in the series we’ve produced.
To learn more about the Sullivan Vintage-35 Banjo, give us a call at (800) 635-2021 and be sure to check out the Sullivan Vintage-35 Story here.
Steve Gill with Eric & Jeff Sullivan in the Sullivan Historic Banjo Room
Steve Gill came by the shop today. After a short tour and a little business, Steve played a few tunes on one of our new Vintage 35 banjos. Steve is a big part of our new banjo as he supplies the resonators for these models. Steve owns and operates Gill Mfg. which currently produces the most accurate reproduction Pre-War Gibson Mastertone banjo resonators on the market. Steve makes all of the resonators by hand and they are so accurate that they could be passed off as original. Finding such a high quality product that is produced by one of the nicest guys I know has really put the finishing touch on our new Vintage 35 banjos.
We’re gearing up to launch the new sullivanbanjo.com ASAP, but we thought we should share a bit more banjo news with you in the meantime. Eric & Co. have been working on this tone ring for over three years, when we began by acquiring a pre-war flathead, and we’re nearing the ‘end’.
We’re preparing to send six of these instruments out to professional pickers to gather feedback before we begin offering the final version. Much like the prototype seen in the videos below, we’re building these banjos to extremely tight pre-war standards. Everything from the neck profile to the finish are as close to matching the pre-war style as possible.
We won’t be offering these until they are finished, and we’re generally not talking about them – we just thought we’d give you a sneak peak. Stay tuned here, and at the new Sullivan Banjo site when it launches, to learn more.
First Quality Music was proud to accept recognition from Taylor Guitars. In 2008, our first full year of offering Taylor, we achieved “Outstanding Performance” as they ranked us at number 14 in sales in the category of U.S. Single Store Locations. We are very proud to be a Taylor Dealer and look forward to servicing our Customers with this wonderful Guitar line for years to come.
