Harmony, founded in Chicago in 1892, became a major supplier of inexpensive stringed instruments to retailers and catalog houses, including Sears, Roebuck & Company, which purchased it in 1916. A subsequent endorsement deal with vaudeville, movie and radio star Roy Smeck, who excelled on guitar, banjo, and ukelele, brought Harmony even greater prosperity.

In the post-war era it skillfully adjusted it’s product range to match new musical trends by offering attractive, if basic, electrics alongside it’s longer-established lines. The Harmony Rocket range of electric guitars debuted in 1958. The name seems to have been chosen in response to the “space-age” overtones of Fender’s Stratocaster.