Jefferson Ukes Were Eye-Catching, Cheap, and Durable Enough to Overlook Their Awful Sound

STORY & PHOTOS BY SANDOR NAGYSZALANCZY | FROM THE WINTER 2025 ISSUE OF UKULELE MAGAZINE

You may disagree, but I think some of the most enjoyable ukuleles on the planet weren’t made to be great-sounding. In fact, some of them are barely playable. Why would someone create a musical instrument like that? Well, if you were born between the end of WWII and the mid-1960s, chances are you know the answer is simple: just for fun! If you wanted to get a rambunctious five-year-old excited about playing music, would you rather hand them an expensive but plain looking ukulele, like a Martin, or an inexpensive one with colorful graphics? No doubt a young child could have fun making noise with either instrument, but you probably wouldn’t lose much sleep if the uke that gets smashed during a round of exuberant play is the cheap one.

Creating inexpensive musical toys for kids was the goal for the Jefferson Manufacturing Company (JMC) of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While JMC was far from the only American company making toy instruments, the thing that distinguished the company’s musical toys from the ones made by their competitors was the primary material they were crafted from: a hardened, cardboard-like material called fiberboard. 

The process for making fiberboard starts with the selection of fibrous materials, including fine wood chips and sawdust. The refined fibers are steamed, to soften the material, and then combined with a resin binder, typically urea-formaldehyde. The resin-coated fibers are pushed through rollers that form the material into a continuous mat of uniform thickness. The mat is then compressed under high heat and pressure to form fiberboard panels. 

Construction-wise, each of JMC’s instruments has a top and back cut from a flat fiberboard panel, while the body’s curved sides were made from fiberboard that was hot molded to final shape. Necks were shaped, somewhat crudely, from soft woods like pine and poplar, which was also used for the nuts and bridges. The fingerboards on some models have actual frets, while others have their frets simply painted on. Tuning pegs were typically friction-fit, violin-style wood pegs, although some models sported plastic ones. The body and neck were simply glued together, with little in the way of reinforcement between parts. To make the precision of body assembly less critical, tops and backs were made slightly oversized, allowing them to overlap the sides slightly. On some instruments, the overlap varies considerably around the perimeter of the body.

Because plain raw fiberboard lacks any sort of visual appeal, each instrument was finished with a colorful paint job before its top was adorned with charming graphics via stencil painting or silk screening. On some models, graphics were added to the fingerboards to act as fret markers. All of JMC’s instruments were strung with nylon strings, which appear to have been made from monofilament fishing line.

Jefferson’s line of toy instruments included both soprano- and tenor-sized four-string ukuleles as well as tenor uke–sized and baritone uke–sized six-string guitars. They also made tenor uke–sized round-bodied instruments referred to as “banjos,” although these had solid tops instead of stretched skin heads. Oddly, JMC displayed very little consistency in naming their instruments. For example, their #77 Rock ’n’ Roll model was called a ukulele while their #76 Wyatt Earp model was called a guitar, even though both were tenor uke–sized with four strings. Each of JMC’s instruments came with a printed booklet that included instructions for tuning and playing both ukuleles and guitars. In addition to chord diagrams, the booklets featured a handful of easy-to-play songs including “Oh! Suzanna” and “Aloha Oe.”

One thing JMC did a particularly good job of was coming up with appealing graphics for each model, employing themes common to the era. Chief among these were cowboy-themed ukes, including the Texan Jr., Roundup Time, and the Rodeo. At the time that these instruments were made and marketed, both radio and television shows about cowboys were extremely popular, including The Lone Ranger and The Roy Rogers Show, both of which were featured as models in JMC’s line. But the product line also included other themes, such as calypso music, space travel, sailboats, and Hawaiiana. A number of models were based on rather odd themes, such as the tenor uke–sized four-string Chipmunk Jamboree Guitar and the Little Clamdigger,  which featured children frolicking at the beach.

Besides their low purchase price and the visual appeal of their colorful graphics, Jefferson’s fiberboard ukes had little else going for them. They were reasonably durable and usually didn’t bend or break if someone accidentally sat on them or if they were used to whack a sibling on the head. Despite JMC’s advertising literature, which proclaimed: “Not just a toy, but a real ukulele,” fiberboard ukes were (and are) barely playable and, frankly, sound simply awful.

Emergence as a Post-WWII Manufacturer

According to historical records, the original Jefferson Manufacturing Company was founded in the mid-1800s as a manufacturer of textiles. Little information is available about JMC’s early business history until 1945, during America’s postwar boom, when Philadelphia’s manufacturing base, which had been focused on wartime output of military goods, was adapting to peacetime consumer demands. This era saw an explosion of manufacturers re-vitalizing their businesses by employing surplus labor, repurposing machinery, and tapping into new consumer markets for affordable goods, including musical instruments and toys.

Switching from textiles to musical toys wasn’t such a big stretch for JMC, as Philadelphia, long regarded as “the workshop of the world,” was a major center for toy manufacturing. Several prominent toy companies were located there, including one of the first in America: Francis, Field, and Francis (FFF). First established in 1838, FFF produced a wide range of children’s toys, including mechanical banks, painted and stenciled tin-wheeled vehicles, trains, and boats. Another noted Philadelphia toy maker, the Albert Schoenhut Company (founded in 1872), also made musical instruments for children, including toy pianos and ukuleles.

Unlike FFF and Schoenhut, Jefferson took a different tack in the musical toys they made. Instead of creating expensive higher-quality instruments, JMC focused on making highly affordable toy instruments designed for children or first-time learners. It’s likely that they chose to make those instruments from fiberboard because the process of making the material utilized machinery repurposed from the manufacture of textiles, JMC’s former specialty.

Most of JMC’s products were sold through independent toy stores and music shops, particularly those specializing in budget instruments and children’s products. JMC reorganized once again in 1983, having added non-musical children’s toys as well as toy vehicles to their production lines. It’s unclear when Jefferson actually stopped making fiberboard guitars, ukuleles, and banjos.