Sound Room Cort B5 Plus AS

CORT IS ONE OF THE LARGEST MUSICAL INSTRUment manufacturers in the world, yet its instruments don’t enjoy the same wide distribution and popularity as many better-known brands.

- Jonathan Herrera

What gives? The answer lies in Cort’s primary role in one of the industry’s most poorly kept “secrets”: The Cort factory in South Korea (and more recently, Indonesia and China) manufactures instruments for many big-time American and European brands, helping builders to flesh out their product line with low-cost import models. Manufacturers as wide-ranging as Fender, Ibanez, G&L, and ESP subcontract the production of some of their low-end lines to the massive Korean company. In fact, it could be argued that Cort is almost singlehandedly responsible for the low-cost/high-quality revolution that occurred back in the early aughts and which now represents the norm. Cort hasn’t been immune to controversy, either, embroiled in the same kind of unfair-labor-practice disputes that are a familiar facet of a globalized economy.