Today´s Great Builders

Some of the best luthiers from all over the world are devoted to construct Weissenborn inspired or lap steel guitars. In our site, weissenborn.es, we can provide you with an affordable, yet great sounding instrument, from beginner to profesional level. If your budget is higher than this and have the chance of purchase a dream guitar from any of these guys, dont doubt. These guys are todays Hermann Weissenborn. We must admire their designs, imagination, skill and taste for guitar construction. The way they have adapted in different manners the Weissenborn-Knutsen hawaiian shape to todays standards and applied modern construction techniques is just incredible.
They all share their respect for the Weissenborn design, as well as the innovation spirit to twist the 1920´s creation into a modern and personal guitar.
Some of these super-talents are:

• Bill Asher: Bill adapted 1920´s acoustic Hawaiian Weissenborn shape to a modern electric lap steel guitar. A solid body shape of fine wood together with a master knowledge of modern pickups produce incredible sounding guitars, with a wide variety of tones and, always, ever lasting sustain . The beauty of this body cut has been imitated many times and is almost accepted as today´s standard for electric Weissenborn. Some of his guitars can be found in our site.

• Dart Instruments: David has been for many years building all types of instruments, including his own version of Weissenborn shape (specially wider at upper bout). His main innovation came in 2003 with his Bowl Back model, a pear shaped guitar built with bowl back (instead of flat). This incredible design made for Ben Harper, together with a superior finish (including a carved face in headstock in his later “Lady Steel” model) make his guitars absolutely unique. He´s also built is famous harp-steel with very high volume sympathetic resonance.

• Celtic Cross Instruments (Neil Russell): Canadian luthier Neil Russell builds modern Weissenborn guitars with an incredible selection of woods and finishes. His main innovation; he built the first double neck Weissenborn that we have known.

• Bear Creek Guitars (Bill Hardin): Another fantastic builder. Apart of buiding superb Weissenborn inspired lap steels made of Hawaiian Koa, he makes Kona style guitars as well as a very personal design, the Beartone is a 27″ scale “big body” 7 string weissenborn guitar designed for Bob Brozman.

• Tony Francis: Making todays closest copies to 1920´s, New Zealand luthier Tony Francis is probably the person that has most studied original designs to make them exactly as they were. No one better for a restoration work.