Lyon & Healy

Lyon & Healy
Company typeSubsidiary
IndustryMusical instruments
FoundedOctober 14, 1864 (1864-10-14)
Founder
  • George Washburn Lyon
  • Patrick Joseph Healy
Headquarters168 North Ogden Avenue,
Chicago, Illinois
,
U.S.
Number of locations
2
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
  • Marco Salvi (president)
ProductsHarps
Number of employees
135
ParentSalvi Harps
Websitewww.lyonhealy.com

Lyon & Healy Harps, Inc. is an American musical instrument manufacturer based in Chicago, Illinois and is a subsidiary of Salvi Harps, but also has a layered corporate structure. Today best known for concert harps, the company's Chicago headquarters and manufacturing facility contains a showroom and concert hall. George W. Lyon and Patrick J. Healy began the company in 1864 as a sheet music shop. By the end of the 19th century, they manufactured a wide range of musical instruments—including not only harps, but pianos, guitars, mandolins, banjos, ukuleles and various brass and other percussion instruments.

Today, Lyon & Healy harps are widely played by professional musicians, since they are one of the few makers of harps for orchestral use—which are known as concert harps or pedal harps. Lyon & Healy also makes smaller folk harps or lever harps (based on traditional Irish and Scottish instruments) that use levers to change string pitch instead of pedals. In the 1980s, Lyon & Healy also began to manufacture electroacoustic harps and, later, solid body electric harps.