A guitarist, a farm and a box of spare parts.

String Swing tells its own story plainly, and nearly all of it comes from the company. According to its website, in 1983 Paul Thieman and Anne Tainter were running a small dairy farm at Elroy, Wisconsin. Thieman played guitar in a local band and wanted somewhere to keep his guitar out of its case — supported, safe from knocks and ready to pick up. The company says nothing like that was sold for home use at the time, so he made a hanger himself “out of spare parts from around the farm.”

Three years later, the company says, Thieman and Tainter were going over their finances — “or lack thereof” — and decided to make more hangers to sell. It gives its founding year as 1987 and says it produced the first mass-distributed guitar wall hanger, a claim we report as the company’s own. That first design, the CC01 Home and Studio Guitar Hanger, was an adjustable yoke that cradles the guitar’s headstock, fixed to a hardwood block screwed to the wall. The company still calls it its most successful product.

The early trade was small. After a trickle of distributor orders, String Swing says, it received its first “large order” in its first year; its website now puts that order at 100 units, while a 2012 version of the same page said 30. Either way, the company remembers it as a very exciting day.

From one hanger to a catalogue for shops.

Music retailers became String Swing’s most enthusiastic customers, the company says. In the late 1980s slatwall — grooved panelling for hanging stock — was spreading through shops, and String Swing began making guitar hangers to fit it. It describes the result as a back-and-forth with dealers that continues today: many of its designs, it says, were first made because a retailer asked “Can you make that?”

The archive bears out the company’s early shape. A December 1998 capture of its website, kept by the Internet Archive, shows “String Swing Mfg.” in Ontario, Wisconsin, selling hangers for home, studio and store, a custom wood slatwall and a metal one called StrongWall, under the line “All String Swing Products are handcrafted in the USA!” By its 2012 website it described itself as a family-run business making more than 1,400 stands, hangers and display modules, and said sales had hit record levels the previous year.

The current range, according to the website, covers fretted, bowed, brass and wind instruments, keyboards, mixers, amplifiers, drums and percussion, with separate lines of stage hangers and store displays. The best-known product is the CC01K Guitar Keeper, an update of the CC01 with a deeper cradle so the guitar cannot sit badly, a pivoting yoke for different headstocks, and padding on the steel. The company says the “K” stands for Keeper, and still recommends the original CC01 for wider classical and bass necks.

Independent notice is modest but real. In September 2022 Acoustic Guitar magazine, in a guide to storing instruments at home, suggested String Swing’s CC29 folding hardwood case rack for keeping cases upright, the Guitar Keeper as a cost-effective wall hanger, and a five-guitar version with pivoting hangers and adjustable spacing.

Who makes the things that hold instruments.

Instrument stands are a quiet trade, and most of the names in it are owned by larger groups. Three of the brands in this set make broad ranges of stands for every instrument. Hercules belongs to KHS Musical Instruments of Taiwan, which says it has existed since 1930 and makes its products in company-owned factories. On-Stage is a division of The Music People of Berlin, Connecticut, which says it was founded in 1979 and is now “an Exertis | JAM business.” König & Meyer says it was founded in 1949 at Wertheim am Main, in Germany, by Karl König and Erich Meyer, and that almost all the metal and plastic parts of its products are made in-house.

Two grew up around keyboards and the stage. Ultimate Support says its founder, Darrell Schoening, built his first A-frame speaker stands in 1977 from salvaged hang-glider tubing; the brand now belongs to ACT Entertainment. Quiklok says it was founded in 1983 between Castelfidardo and Recanati, in Italy’s Marche, and that its first products were the QL/606 and QL/642 keyboard stands.

One is a drum-hardware specialist. Gibraltar was among the percussion brands that Fender’s KMC Music sold to Drum Workshop in January 2015, Music Inc. reported, and it came under Roland when the Japanese company bought DW in 2022, MusicRadar reported.

The last is a wall-hanger maker. String Swing says it was founded in 1987 by Paul Thieman and Anne Tainter, who ran a small dairy farm in Elroy, Wisconsin, and that its entire product line is still made in that state.

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.

Made in Wisconsin, the company says.

Where its products are made is central to how String Swing presents itself. Its website says the entire product line is still manufactured in Wisconsin; in 2012 it said everything was made on site at its headquarters in Ontario, Wisconsin, a village in Vernon County, in south-western Wisconsin. It argues that running a factory in America is expensive but gives it control over new products and quality. The wooden blocks for its hangers, it says, are “crafted by local Amish craftsmen from North American lumber”, in cherry, oak, ash and black walnut. We found no independent account of the factory, so these are the company’s claims; the 1998 website shows the US-made promise is at least that old.

The company trades as String Swing, Inc. and calls itself “a humble, family-owned business.” We found no record of a sale or outside owner in the sources we checked, but no independent source on its ownership either. It backs its hangers with a limited lifetime warranty for the original buyer, and on its homepage claims more than 65,000 five-star reviews and displays “trusted to over 10 million guitars since 1987” — figures we could not check.

It is also unusually frank about a known risk. The company notes that some foams and rubbers can mark nitrocellulose lacquer, the finish of many older guitars, a problem it says some call “stand rash.” String Swing says its padding has so far not been shown to react with nitro finishes, but it will not give an unconditional guarantee, and sells dye-free cloth covers for its cradles as a precaution.

For a design guide, String Swing shows how a small maker can build a brand on one plain object and an origin story. Compare Hercules Stands, a stand brand backed by a large Taiwanese group, and König & Meyer, a German stand maker founded in 1949. For this guide we use walnut, cherry and oak tones with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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