A set of leather tools taken instead of cash.

Levy’s Leathers began in 1973 in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, a small town in Atlantic Canada. The company tells its origin as a matter of chance: Dennis Levy, offered a choice between cash and a set of leather-working tools as payment for an odd job, took the tools and found he liked the work. His brother Harvey Levy, a lifelong guitarist, was on the road building a network of shops, and Dennis began making guitar straps for him to sell. Within a few years, the company says, Dennis and his wife Cheryl had put their savings into Levy’s Leathers Ltd.

Not every account tells it the same way. A 2015 profile by Westside Distribution, the brand’s Glasgow distributor, credited Harvey Levy as founder and described a business that, in the 1970s, made the leather goods of the counter-culture — belts, barrettes, floppy hats, watchbands and pouches — before concentrating on guitar straps. The company’s own history, Gator’s 2018 announcement and the Canadian Six String Nation project all name Dennis as founder; Six String Nation adds that Harvey joined in 1979 and moved many operations to the centre of the country.

That move explains a second address. Six String Nation says Levy’s was headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 2006, and the 2015 Westside profile described about 200 employees in two factories, in Antigonish and Winnipeg, making more than 365 kinds of strap; it mentioned a mural covering almost the whole Winnipeg building. Whether the Winnipeg plant still operates is not stated in the current sources we checked.

Leathers, straps and the Right Height.

Levy’s range is wide. Its current website sorts straps by material — leather, cotton, polyester, suede and folk-style designs — alongside saxophone straps, children’s straps, gig bags and accessories. It describes its leathers in some detail: vegetable-tanned carving leather soaked for seven days in baths made with live oak bark, firm enough to emboss and carve; chrome-tanned top-grain leather for entry-level straps; drum-dyed garment leather; suede; and “Crazy Horse” leather, which it says develops a patina with age.

Its best-known mechanical idea is the Right Height line, which the company calls patented: straps with what it names RipChord Technology, a pull handle that raises or lowers the instrument while it is being played. Its Signature Legacy series carries what it calls “Levy’s renowned leather badge.” The brand also makes rifle and shotgun slings under the Levy’s Outdoor name, which it says are crafted at the Antigonish factory, “20 minutes from the northern coast and Northumberland Strait.”

Levy’s straps also turn up in national history. The strap that carries Voyageur, the guitar at the centre of the Six String Nation project, is a Levy’s MS26 hand-brushed suede strap, the project says.

Colour and print matter as much as hide. The 2015 Westside profile singled out embossed and stitched leather straps alongside the brightly printed MPD2 sublimation range, and quoted the slogan Levy’s then used, “Your Guitar Is Worth It.” The 2019 relaunch kept that split between traditional leather and bold printed designs, adding new materials such as grille cloth, and the current site still groups straps into leather, “natural” and polyester families with best-seller and last-chance collections.

Design and documentation.

The seven makers in this guide each hold one corner of the guitar-accessory trade — straps, capos, tuners or picks — and most are still tied to a founder or a founding family.

Levy’s, which makes straps, was founded in 1973 by Dennis Levy, its 2009 website said, describing factories in Winnipeg and in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. In January 2019 Gator Co., the Tampa case maker, said it had acquired Levy’s the year before, and Levy’s now gives a Tampa address.

Three make capos. Shubb was formed in California in 1974 by Rick Shubb and Dave Coontz; Rick Shubb’s own history says a dedicated shop in Qingdao, China, was making about 80% of its capos by 2016, the year its founding partnership ended. Kyser says the machinist Milton Kyser had incorporated it in Texas by 1980, and that it makes its capos in Kaufman, Texas, under his great-niece Meredith McClung-Attebery. Paige, begun by Bryan Paige and his father Ralph in Michigan, says it now operates only from Erwin, Tennessee.

Two make tuners. Peterson Electro-Musical Products, founded by the inventor Richard H. Peterson, has been based in Alsip, outside Chicago, since 1964, its history says. Snark says it launched in 2010; in 2013 its warranty address was Evets Corporation’s, in Camarillo, California; English Wikipedia names Evets as the owner of Danelectro. Gravity Picks, the youngest, says it began in early 2011 and makes its acrylic picks in California.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Tampa owner and a 2019 rebrand.

The Levy family sold the business in 2018. On 24 January 2018 Gator Cases of Tampa, Florida — a case maker founded in 2000 by Jerry Freed and his daughter Crystal Morris — announced it had acquired Levy’s Leathers Ltd, described as a maker of leather guitar straps “based in Canada.” The announcement said Levy’s manufacturing of leather goods would remain in Canada, while also citing Gator’s “numerous offshore manufacturing facilities”; Music Inc. reported the deal on 6 February 2018. “Levy’s Leathers has been my life and passion since I started it 45 years ago,” Dennis Levy said in the release, which also quoted Harvey Levy and Danica Levy.

A year later Gator relaunched the brand. In January 2019 it announced more than 150 new strap designs and “a new look-and-feel that includes new brand colors, packaging and brand marks,” with a new website to follow, and named Jen Tabor, founder of the accessory brand Souldier, as Levy’s brand director. The release called Levy’s “the iconic leather goods brand from Nova Scotia” and credited a team “in Nova Scotia and U.S.”; new designs set leather punch-outs and amplifier grille cloth into straps. The range was shown at the Winter NAMM Show in Anaheim.

Today the Levy’s website gives a contact address in Tampa, shared with Gator, and its outdoor site says “Levy’s is part of the Gator family of brands.” On where straps are made, the claims are specific but partial: a handful of product descriptions say “handcrafted in Canada” or “handcrafted in Nova Scotia,” and Six String Nation says manufacturing still takes place in Antigonish. We give those as the company’s and the project’s words rather than as a statement about every line.

For a design guide, Levy’s shows how a workshop brand can keep its origin story at the heart of its identity through a change of owner and a full rebrand. Compare Dunlop and Ernie Ball, two other names in guitar accessories. For this guide we use saddle tan, dark brown and cream with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Levy’s’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.