Some of the best flattop guitars of Lyon & Healy/Washburn’s history arrived in the decade following the war’s end, when they were designed to carry steel strings instead of gut, and delivered the bolder, crisper tone that went along with it.
Like many manufacturers, the company resorted to marketing more affordable instruments during World War I to keep the line afloat. Lyon & Healy guitars from after the turn of the century range broadly in quality, construction, ornamentation and price. Healy pressed on, and the company continued to go from strength to strength for the next few decades, passing into the hands of his sons and other management personnel after Healy’s death, in 1905. Lyon, by then in his late 60s, retired in 1889 and passed away five years later. The company grew rapidly through both a network of retail outlets and mail-order distribution of its more affordable models. Lyon & Healy opened a large factory in the early 1880s, where they made guitars, banjos, mandolins, harps, zithers and other stringed instruments.
