Gold Tone · Titusville, Florida
Someone has
a song
in them.
Wayne and Robyn Rogers built a business around making room for it. Gold Tone’s story begins with musicians, and keeps returning to the person who wants to play.
Before the manufacturer
There was
a music shop.
A place where the person imagining the music could walk through the door.
The first thing I want to know about an instrument company is whether the people behind it remember what it feels like to want to play.
Gold Tone’s company history gives that question a good beginning. Wayne and Robyn Rogers were folk musicians before they were instrument manufacturers. They opened Strings N’ Things Music Center in 1978, then founded Gold Tone Banjos in Titusville in 1993.
That order matters to me. A music shop brings you close to people at different stages of wanting something. One person knows exactly what they are looking for. Another has an idea, a sound in their head, or the hope that they might be able to learn.
You get to see musical ambition before it has become proficiency.
The City of Titusville’s 2023 account describes Strings N’ Things offering lessons and supplying instruments to schools in northern Brevard County. That gives the company’s later history a local foundation. Music was already moving through the community, and the Rogerses were helping people participate.
I like that way into the story because it keeps the instrument attached to its purpose. Someone needs to be able to pick it up, spend time with it, and discover what they can do.
The object matters. The possibility it opens matters, too.
The first Gold Tone banjo
A small instrument
with somewhere to go.
Wayne’s TB-100 Travel Banjo was Gold Tone’s first instrument. The company says it began selling the Traveler by mail order and credits a favorable Banjo Newsletter review with helping demand grow.
There is something wonderfully direct about beginning with a travel banjo. The idea contains a person who wants to take their music along.
We often describe invention through novelty. I am just as interested in the ordinary situation an invention makes possible. A musician has a life that includes movement. An instrument designed with travel in mind acknowledges that the desire to play does not stay in one room.
The city’s history adds the setting for Wayne’s early experiments: a small shed at the family’s Windover home. It also describes Robyn managing quality control as the business developed.
Those details belong together. Making an idea work and deciding whether the result is ready are both part of building something other people can trust.
It is tempting to tell this kind of story as a sudden leap from a backyard experiment to a recognizable company. The more interesting space lies between them. People have to solve problems, repeat what worked, notice what did not, and keep the promise understandable to the next customer.
The Traveler gave that work a clear destination. There was someone who wanted to carry a banjo.
Robyn Rogers
The person
people called.
A company’s influence can travel through advice, too.
There is a revealing tribute to Robyn in the director’s introduction to the 2017 documentary “Mama Gold Tone.” The filmmaker, who grew up with the Rogers family, describes calling her for guidance while building a company of their own.
The account remembers her as direct, intuitive about business, and able to leave someone feeling encouraged. It also says she needed persuading to take part in the film because she did not regard herself as especially remarkable.
I find that combination very moving. A person can become an important source of confidence for others while regarding her own contribution as ordinary.
Business histories are good at identifying the person who designed a thing. They have a harder time recording the person whose judgment helped someone keep going. That second contribution can be substantial even when it leaves no object behind.
Robyn’s presence makes Gold Tone’s story feel fuller. The company has instruments, designs, facilities and a history of growth. It also has a co-founder whose experience became useful beyond the immediate business.
That is one of the ways a family enterprise becomes part of a place. People encounter it through more than a purchase. Someone remembers working there, learning something, asking for advice, or feeling that an experienced person took their question seriously.
The title “Mama Gold Tone” makes sense in that light. It recognizes a relationship that a corporate title would have difficulty containing.
Before the first note
The people
preparing it
play, too.
There is useful knowledge in knowing how the work feels from the other side.
On its instrument-origins page, Gold Tone describes design and prototyping in Titusville, production with international partners, and a twelve-point setup at its Florida facility. It emphasizes that the people preparing the instruments are players themselves.
I appreciate the specificity of that account. The company’s work connects people in different places, and each stage has a contribution to make.
The detail that stays with me is the player’s perspective inside the preparation. A person who uses an instrument brings a kind of experience that extends beyond seeing whether all the pieces are present. They understand what it is like to approach the thing as a musician.
That matters especially when someone is learning. A beginner is trying to interpret several unfamiliar experiences at once. They are learning what their hands can do, what a sound should be, and how practice changes it.
I admire the intention to give that person an instrument prepared by someone who understands the activity from within. It is a practical way of respecting the next player’s effort.
It also returns us to the original music-shop relationship. The company makes and prepares instruments for people who want to use them. The work has a destination in another person’s hands.
Another maker’s life’s work
What it means to carry
a name forward.
Gold Tone’s story took on another responsibility when it acquired OME Banjos in 2023.
In its March 2025 account of the transition, the company describes OME founder Chuck Ogsbury’s friendship with Wayne and the decision to continue OME’s work. The Boulder workshop’s tools and materials moved to a dedicated Titusville facility, separate from the main Gold Tone operation.
One detail makes the continuity tangible: unfinished necks, rims and resonators from the earlier workshop became material for further instruments.
I find that a powerful image. Something that had been started in one place still had the possibility of becoming music.
An acquisition can be described in the language of ownership. A craft business also contains decisions, methods, preferences and accumulated knowledge. Carrying it forward means encountering the work of people who cared about it before you did.
The dedicated OME workshop interests me for that reason. It gives the inherited name a distinct place to continue. The account recognizes that OME arrives with an identity of its own.
I am drawn to businesses willing to take on that kind of stewardship. Starting something asks what you want to create. Continuing someone else’s work also asks what deserves to be understood before you make the next decision.
For Gold Tone, that question sits naturally beside its own family history. Wayne and Robyn know what it means for a business to grow from years of a person’s attention. OME adds another body of attention to the story.
Why Gold Tone matters to me
Leave room
for the next player.
Gold Tone’s showroom description includes current instruments, discontinued models and older prototypes. I like the thought of those things sharing a space.
A current model shows what the company offers now. A prototype holds a question somebody was working on. An older instrument remembers a direction the business once took. Together, they suggest a continuing conversation about what a musician might want to do.
That is how I have come to understand the larger story. The Rogerses began as players. Their shop helped others learn and find instruments. Wayne’s designs explored practical possibilities. Robyn’s judgment contributed to the business and, as the filmmaker’s tribute makes clear, to other people’s confidence.
Now another maker’s history has a place in Titusville, too.
It is a rich contribution for a family business to make. Instruments leave. Music happens elsewhere. The company may never hear every song played on something that passed through its care.
But the work still makes room for those songs.
Somewhere, someone is about to pick up an instrument and find out what they can do with it. That is a good possibility to spend a working life helping create.
Rob Urban
A few useful answers
About Gold Tone.
Who founded Gold Tone?
Wayne and Robyn Rogers founded Gold Tone Banjos in Titusville, Florida, in 1993, after years running a music shop.
What was Gold Tone’s first instrument?
The company identifies Wayne Rogers’s TB-100 Travel Banjo as its first instrument, initially sold by mail order.
What work does Gold Tone do in Florida?
Gold Tone describes design, prototyping and instrument setup in Titusville, alongside production with international manufacturing partners. Its OME operation has a separate dedicated workshop.
How is OME Banjos connected to Gold Tone?
Gold Tone acquired OME in 2023 and moved its workshop tools and materials from Boulder to Titusville to continue the brand’s instrument making.