Patrick Healy then led the company into a period of major expansion, beginning with a larger new factory and improved mass-production techniques, and soon dominated the domestic market.

By the 1920s, Lyon & Healy faced growing competition from other instrument manufacturers as well as from the rise of other forms of entertainment, particularly film and the gramophone.

Lyon & Healy gradually shifted manufacturing chores onto wholesaler Tonk Brothers, to whom they sold the guitar portion of the business in 1928, continuing to produce their own lines of harps, pianos, and organs.

In the early 1960s, retail store The Chicago Guitar Gallery hired Rudolf "Rudy" Schlacher, a young German violin builder, as a repair technician.

It was Beckmen Music that resurrected the Washburn name, and beginning in 1974 applied it to a series of quality imported acoustic guitars, made in Japan by Terada, as well as a selection of mandolins and banjos.

With assistance from Ikutaro Kakehashi (founder of Roland Corporation), Schlacher was able to find instrument factories in Japan that could meet the desired standards.

That year, a Chicago Tribune article[11] confidently places Washburn "among the top three guitar manufacturers in the world," behind only Fender and Gibson.

On December 15, 2002, Washburn International announced that it had completed acquisition of U.S. Music Corporation,[12] and would be rolling its assets into that company in a reverse merger.

The new USM's headquarters were in Mundelein (440 E. Courtland Street), which also housed the stateside Washburn luthiery, "the USA Custom Shop," previously located at Elston and Springfield avenues.

Schlacher announced completion of selling USM to JAM Industries on August 24, 2009, and that he would be stepping away from his company after fully four decades.

These instruments featured innovative push-pull split humbuckers, brass hardware and inlays, and neck-through construction.

When Samick opened their Cileungsi, Indonesia, facility in 1992, this factory also began to produce Washburn-branded instruments, generally identifiable by an "SI-" serial number prefix.

The addition in later models of sound slots (rather than the traditional round soundhole), a patented innovation, further reduced the possibility of feedback, and the guitars quickly became the go-to stage acoustic for artists such as Jimmy Page, George Harrison, and Bob Dylan.

The design also lent itself well to acoustic basses, and Washburn's AB Series quickly became popular both for its look and its tone, whether amplified or unplugged.

For example, the WLG110SWCEK indicates that it's part of the Woodline series (WL-), likely top of the line (110), Grand Auditorium (G) size, all solid wood, cutaway, piezo pickup, and originally included a case.