Crown / Crown Professional Guitars

(By Jimmy Noise / Jan 2013)

Crown and Crown Professional guitars were imported to the US by Crown City Imports in Pasadena California. The company was owned by Jules Steinman and his brother. They originally owned a pawn broker shop called Crown City Loan & Jewellery. One of the items they sold in the shop was guitars. It’s not known if they were selling used guitars or new ones from a distributor in the US. They were in a position to observe that there was a huge market for guitars and this was a growing market. At some point they decided that would source there own guitars from Japan and import them. This was the beginning of a new company called Crown City Imports, based on the shop name. The Crown name came from the nickname for the City of Pasadena, which is the "Crown City".

The two brothers would fly to Japan, were they would go and visit various musical instruments suppliers and order shipments to be sent back to the US. Crown City imports, imported acoustic and electric guitars, amplifiers and drums from 1966 to 1973. The guitars were supplied from a number of different manufactures in Japan.

It’s not known if they only sold the guitars in their shop, but given the catalogue below, it is probable that they would sell their guitars wholesale to other retail outlets.

Some of the acoustic products were actually rather expensive for the time ($400 range) although most of their guitars sold in the $100 to $250 range.

The original pawnbroker store “Crown City Loan & Jewellery” is still in business today.

Logos

	The early logo started as a black sticker with gold writing of the word crown. (as seen above) This was followed by a cast logo in the shape of a crown with the words Crown Professional on it.
	Various suppliers used different logos as seen to the right.
	In later years the acoustic guitars and law suit era guitars would have an inlay with a C and an I dissecting it down the middle. Acoustics would also have a label inside with Crown City Importers on it.