Style 2 Hourglass

By the time Weissenborn started referring to his Hawaiian guitars in numerical "Styles", (around the time of his company formation in 1923) , he had already been making his guitars in each style for some years, even though they were not referred to as such.

As far as I am aware, all the early pre-production hollow neck models were what went onto be called Style 2s, and came in a wide range of construction details. Interestingly enough, despite Weissenborns fondness for this style, these were not big sellers when it came to production models. As George Noe pointed out in his book, most players in the 1920s fell into two camps; either they wanted a nice Weissenborn guitar, or they wanted a fancy one.

And not much has changed today. As a maker, the only other Style 2 I had built was during my prototyping years, and so naturally I was thrilled to receive the opportunity to build a proper reproduction in the old style.


Here is the result of many months hard work - a Style 2 in the late 1920s style, featuring old growth Koa wood, hide glue construction throughout and hand applied nitrocellulose over a natural resin called Seedlac. The tuners are by National Resophonic, retrofitted to my specifications.

After building the guitar and having it around the shop for a while, aesthetically the Style 2 is really something that grows on you. But mostly this guitar's charm lays in its voice - this is a gorgeous sounding and playing instrument, and I am really happy for the client with how well it turned out.