Defunct Musical Instrument Manufacturers - R

Defunct Musical Instrument Manufacturers - R

RAM See --> GTRC Services (USA - MI amplifiers 80's - 90's)

Raul (Drums & percussion) See --> Bauer Percussion (Brazil used until 1995)

Recordare LLC

Company started in Los Altos, California, USA in 2000 by Michael Good and incorporated in 2001. The company initially developed the MusicXML notation software exchange format alongside holding out a concert band music review site called eConcertBand.com, but in 2002 Recordare delivered its first products in the form of PD classical sheet music in MusicXML form and the "Dolet" plugin software that allowed established music notation software to import and export files in the MusicXML format and a year or two later started selling third party notation software that supported the format on its site. Although the company continued to upgrade its software offerings up until 2010, it did go a bit quiet after 2006 and in late 2011 the company was closed down, the rights to the software and trademarks was sold to MakeMusic Inc. and Mr Good was hired by the same company.

Red Tree Music Inc.

Musical wholesale business founded in 1973 by Austin Lempit as a company that specialised in marketing budget musical instruments and was based in Mamaroneck, in New York, USA. Initially the company provided instruments from other NY based jobber or wholesalers such as Buegeleisen & Jacobson but in 1975 the company started importing instruments under their own brands, the Studio One name was used for guitars and related products like effect pedals and amplifiers while Alton was used for acoustic guitars, banjos and drum accessories. The quality of the instruments varied a bit but it should be noted that these were budget instruments at the time, the acoustic guitars sold under the Alton brand for instance were fairly indifferent South Korean made plywood instruments while some of the electronics came from American vendors and were built down to a price.

In 1978 Mr. Lempit lost control of the business in a messy divorce battle with his wife and with the new owners came a brand change, while the Alton brand was retained the company dropped the Studio One label and started using the Zapp brand, they also started to use different suppliers, some of the Zapp branded electric guitars were quite presentable, at the least to begin with, a few of them were apparently made by Ida Gakki while other models where supplied by another Japanese maker not high quality perhaps but a step up from the Korean re-brands, but the amplifiers sold under the Zapp name are however the same generic budget practice amps built for the company in the USA as they had been selling under the Studio One name.

The company disappears at some time in the early 80's although someone is selling Lotus branded products that are identical to some of the Zapp products as late as 1989, but it is not known if that is some sort of continuation of the Red Tree Music Inc business or simply another USA re-branding operation.

René G. Ceballos

Argentinian gentleman based in Buenos Aires, started putting out freeware VST signal processing and virtual instruments in the year 2000 under the RGC Audio brand, although later he preferred the stylised rgc:audio. Some of the plugins became very popular in particular a virtual analogue called "Triangle" which was for years the most popular freeware softsynth available, but Mr Ceballos also released commercial software such as the "sfz+" sample playback engine and virtual synths "Square I", "z3ta+" and the "Pentagon I".

The sfz+ and the z3ta+ in particular became very popular and caught they eye of USA software house Cakewalk (owned by Roland) who hired Mr Ceballos to create a few utilities and a virtual analogue subtractive synthesiser called PSYN which they sold as part of bundles, and shipped with the more expensive versions of their Sonar sequencer. The co-operation went well enough for Cakewalk to make an offer for the product line and in January 2005 it was sold and Mr Ceballos went to work for the company. He left Cakewalk in 2011 and now works as a manager for Newsan in his native Argentina. In 2009 Cakewalk released as freeware some of the soft synths such as Square One and Pentagon that had been commercial offerings from RGC Audio, and they can be downloaded form their store without charge.

Reuben Banjos See --> Jim Faulkner

Reverend Musical Instruments Inc.

Company founded in 2005 by Joseph F. Naylor but he had been selling electric guitars & bass guitars under the Reverend name since 1997. Reverend MI was based in Warren, Michigan, USA and basically continued selling the same lines of instruments that Mr Naylor had been trading but did not continue the amplifier or pedal lines, the main difference between the two being the Naylor made his instruments in the USA while RMI Inc. made their had the instruments made in South Korea. The company survived to 2009 when the rights to the designs and trademark was sold to Ken Haas who later founded the Haas Guitars company around the operation.

RGC Audio (Softsynts & VST signal processors) See --> René G. Ceballos

Roadkill See --> GTRC Services (USA - Pedals etc - 00's)

Rock Show/Rock Town (USA - guitar amps/accessories 80's) See --> Evetscorp

Ronald Beddoes
Small atelier started by engineer Ron Beddoes in the latter half of the 1960's after he retired from British Rail where he had headed a small workshop that made educational and display models. The RB company made train and architectural models on a commercial basis but also manufactured banjos as a sideline, but rather than original designs these were mostly high quality copies of older American banjos from companies like Gibson and Ludwig, often of a better quality than the originals in fact. When Mr. Beddoes joined the George Formby Society in the early 1970's he was emotionally blackmailed by the other members of said society to manufacture banjo ukes, these like the banjos he manufactured were copies of older American designs but carried over some details from the banjos, the pegs used were banjo size for instance and the headstocks were thinner than on the originals.

All his banjos and the bulk of the ukulele banjos he manufactured have a logo on the headstock that looks like CN but that is a stylised form of NC which stands for New Concert which was supposed to be the actual brandname. Beddoes also made a few copies of Ludwig banjoleles with the Alan Randall name on the headstock that were cheaper than his usual products, but Alan Randall was a well known banjo ukulele player in the 1960's and often worked as a Georg Formby impersonator.

When Mr. Beddoes gave up manufacturing musical instruments due to health issues in the 1980's the manufacture was taken up by Ron Spiers, the company continued the model making part of the business for a few more years though, but Mr. Beddoes has since passed away.

The best know customer of Mr. Beddoes was beatle George Harrison, but he bought a New Concert banjo ukulele in the early 80's and used it live every now and then

Resources : British Pathé has a lovely old film of model railvay made by Beddoes while working for British Rail.

Ross Mallet (Concert percussion) See --> KHS Group

Rotop (Strings) See --> Rotosound

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The site was last compiled on Sun Nov 10 2013 at 9:15:00am