7E Deluxe Arch-top Electric in quilted big-leaf maple w/Pomelle sapele back, PAF humbuckers, and Chet Atkins-style Bigsby.
7E in curly big-leaf maple and koa w/nickel-plated custom short bronze tailpiece and ancillary banjo-style bridges for behind-the-bridge playability.
7E “Oldboy” w/curly big-leaf maple top, black walnut back, Filtertrons pickups, and custom nickel-plated cast bronze trapeze tailpiece
Model 7E
Our most-requested electric guitar.
I love electric guitars. They were the reason I started making guitars but I wasn’t too enamoured with the weight or the predictability of the solid body.
They don’t play like guitars do—too much sustain and not enough resonance. While working at Songbird Music in Toronto I got to work on a lot of old Gretsch guitars – Dual and Sparkle Jets, 6120′s and Country Gentlemen – hybrid archtops with some solid body construction. They weren’t built so well but they had character. So I set about building guitars that mixed the best of both worlds: An arch top mounted on a rim that was a solid piece of wood hollowed out into an acoustic chamber. That’s the 7E. More recently, the rim utilizes a bent-wood rim mounted to a center block, spherically arched flat-back. The pickups mounted through the back, tailpiece seated on adjustable posts keep the top open and lively. An adjustable damper keeps feed back at bay at higher volumes.
-- Allan Beardsell
Beardsell guitars come in several body shapes and styles: large, medium, and small bodied steel-string acoustic, solid-body electric, semi-acoustic arch top electric, nylon string, manouche-style, and harp guitar (we even make a pretty sweet mandolin and a killer electric banjo).
Get an eyeful of the photos in the various galleries strewn throughout the site. See something you like that's almost-but-not-quite what you're looking for? Feel free to order "off the menu," as many already have. Truth be told, we've created many "hybrid" instruments over the years, with most features available on one model transferrable (within reason) to just about anything else (like an archtop-style custom brass tailpiece on a steel-string flattop, or a multi-scale classical guitar, or a cutaway banjolectric, or... well, you get the idea).
Venetian or Florentine cutaways, unconventional fingerboard extensions, wacky amplification solutions, sideports (with or without sliding covers), whimsical logo styles, personalized inlays, motorized, remote-controlled attachments of dubious form and function... it's all to play for. Whatever you have in mind, Al will be happy to discuss various options and possibilities with you.