Bear Creek Guitars is a

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

-based manufacturer of

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

an instruments. Luthier Bill Hardin founded the company in Hawaii in 1995 after working at O.M.I Dobro and the

Santa Cruz Guitar Company The Santa Cruz Guitar Company is an American manufacturer of acoustic guitars, located in Santa Cruz, California. The company was started in 1976 by luthier Richard B. Hoover, who is reputed to have "trained some of the most accomplished contempora ...

. Bear Creek primarily builds acoustic lap steel guitars in the tradition of the

Weissenborn Weissenborn or H. Weissenborn is a brand of lap slide guitar manufactured by Hermann Weissenborn in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s. These instruments are now highly sought after, and form the base for most non-resonator acoustic lap steel ...

, one of only a handful of manufacturers basing their instruments on the original Weissenborn design. Hardin has collaborated with guitarist and

ethnomusicologist Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. It encompasses distinct theoretical and methodical approaches that emphasize cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dim ...

Bob Brozman Bob Brozman (March 8, 1954 – April 23, 2013) was an American guitarist and ethnomusicologist. Biography Brozman was born to a Jewish family in Long Island, New York, and began playing the guitar when he was six. He performed gypsy jazz, ca ...

in designing an updated 7-string

baritone A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the r ...

version of the Style IV Weissenborn, called the BearTone.

History

Bill Hardin was introduced to the Weissenborn by Don Young of

National Reso-Phonic Guitars National Reso-Phonic Guitars is a manufacturer of resonator guitars and other resonator instruments including resonator mandolins, tenor instruments, and resonator ukuleles.Fretboard Journal The ''Fretboard Journal'' is a keepsake magazine for guitar, mandolin, and stringed instrument players. In the same vein of other "coffee table magazines" such as '' The Surfer's Journal'', the Golfer's Journal and the ''Rodder's Journal'', it bo ...

feature article.

Instruments

Bear Creek builds both hollowneck and Kona roundneck copies of the Weissenborn, as well as Spanish steel-stings, ukuleles, and resonators. The BearTone can be heard on Bob Brozman's ''Nankuru Naisa'', his second collaboration with Takashi Hirayasu (their first collaboration, ''Jin Jin'', features Brozman on a Bear Creek "Kona Rocket.")Brozman, Bob
"Bear Creek Hawaiian Guitars"
Retrieved Jan 17, 2011.

References

Guitar manufacturing companies of the United States {{musical-instrument-company-stub