private industry musical instruments headquarters california area served global key people bill hardin products custom weissenborn style hawaiian lap steel guitars website bear creek guitars bear creek guitars is a california based manufacturer of hawaiian instruments . luthier bill hardin founded the company in hawaii in 1995 after working at o.m.i dobro and the santa cruz guitar company . 1 bear creek primarily builds acoustic lap steel guitars in the tradition of the weissenborn one of only a handful of manufacturers basing their instruments on the original weissenborn design . 2 hardin has collaborated with guitarist and ethnomusicologist bob brozman in designing an updated 7 string baritone version of the style iv weissenborn called the beartone . history edit bill hardin was introduced to the weissenborn by don young of national reso phonic guitars while they both worked for dobro . one day don brought in a weissenborn copy and bill was impressed with its sound . it was such a pure slide sound and just amazing he recalled in a 2007 fretboard journal feature article . 3 instruments edit bear creek builds both hollowneck and kona roundneck copies of the weissenborn 4 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 . 5 references edit aldrich margret ; michael dregni 2003 . this old guitar . voyageur press . p. 151 . isbn 0 89658 631 6 . gerkin teja ; michael simmons ; frank ford ; richard johnston 2005 . acoustic guitar the composition construction and evolution of one of world s most beloved instruments . hal leonard corporation . p. 125 . isbn 0 634 07920 4 . volk andy . hollow be thy name bear creek s bill hardin and the allure of the weissenborn style guitar . the fretboard journal issue number 8 winter 2007 p. 18 . diego c sar . weissenborn.es today s incredible builders . retrieved jan 17 2011 . brozman bob . bear creek hawaiian guitars . retrieved jan 17 2011 . this article about a musical instrument company is a stub . you can help wikipedia by expanding it . v t e retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title bear creek guitars & oldid 647144669 categories guitar manufacturing companiesmusical instrument company stubshidden categories pages using infobox company with unsupported parametersall stub articles navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 14 february 2015 at 20 10 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view