Beardsell Guitars

This is the second of the steel string models I developed, after the 4G.

I wanted to offer up an alternative to the larger body of the 4G. This guitar is well suited for the stronger attack of a finger style or comping guitar player. The 15 ¼" bout may be smaller, but this guitar still has a big voice.

When I was playing acoustic guitars in clubs and auditoriums I would be playing behind singers, and sometimes with larger bands, going between fingerstyles and flatpicking. I was having a hell of a time hearing the guitar as a dynamic voice. When I was hearing only the electronic foldback in the monitor I would end up playing as hard as possible all the time just to feel present in the mix on top of the compressed character of the pick up. It meant my playing suffered and I broke a lot of strings. This got me thinking about projection and volume, resonance and how these things define the way we interact with, respond and use a musical instrument, especially these days when amplification is virtually a given. I wanted to figure out how to create a situation where the instrument speaks to the player first, with all the dynamic of an acoustic performance –- that's where the side ports come in.