What do Jeff Bridges, Lisa Loeb and Foreigner’s Jeff Pilson all have in common? If you said they all play music, you’d be right, but here’s the better answer: They all play custom guitars handmade in Bend.
Specifically, they jam out on Breedlove guitars, which are quite possibly the industry’s most sustainably made guitars. Many feature wood and components unique to Oregon. “Sustainability is in our blood,” says R.A. Beattie, Breedlove’s director of artist relations. “Who wants to play a guitar made from a clear-cut, devastated forest? A lot of musicians do not.”
That includes Academy Award-winning actor Bridges, an outspoken environmentalist who partnered with Breedlove to design three custom guitars like the Signature Oregon Dreadnought Concerto Bourbon CE. Here’s what’s special about this sustainable Oregon company.
Handcrafted Guitars Made With Myrtlewood
That guitar, along with many others in the line, uses myrtlewood. If you’ve ever hiked along the Rogue River or around the day-use area at Humbug Mountain State Park near Port Orford, you’ve probably seen them — those fragrant, broadleaf evergreens that look and smell like fresh bay leaves, a relative.
They also produce a rich, gorgeous grain that makes the wood popular for makers to craft things like bowls and trinkets. It’s also a fantastic “tone wood” to use in instruments thanks to its uniform cellular structure. Breedlove uses it in its guitars by hiring someone to wander around Oregon’s coastal forests looking for trees that have either blown down in storms or died and fallen over.
“Or a farmer will call us and say, ‘Hey, I have a myrtlewood I need to take down. Do you want it?’” Beattie says. “It’s really a tree-by-tree endeavor.” That means each guitar is also very different. No two ever look the same.
Breedlove has a long history of going the extra mile for sustainable innovation. The company was founded 30 years ago when Larry Breedlove and Steve Henderson, two luthiers — as people who make stringed instruments are called — left their careers at Taylor Guitars and moved to Tumalo, a small farming community northwest of Bend.
There they began tinkering with new ways to improve the instruments they loved, blending science and design. They played with bridge trusses and asymmetrical headstocks. They developed graduated tops and groundbreaking body shapes. For each instrument, they tested the sound properties of individual pieces of wood using microphones and mallets and computers that could analyze the data.
Escaping the Trenches of Tradition
In 2010 the company sold to Tom Bedell, the former co-owner of Nashville’s legendary Two Old Hippies music shop and venue, and by 2012 demand for handmade Breedlove guitars had soared to the point the company needed three dozen craftsmen and a larger facility, which Bedell found in an industrial area on the southern end of Bend. The tinkering hasn’t stopped, and every point of the company’s supply chain — down to the seed, in some cases — is tracked and monitored to ensure minimal impact to the planet.
“Since making music is about being creative and inventive, you would think that making guitars would not be in the trenches of tradition, but it is,” says Beattie. “Breedlove is unique with all of these little pieces that are very much of the Northwest, and the people who work for Breedlove really have to think differently and be a little different.”
Many of the luthiers at Breedlove today have been building guitars for decades, like Gary Flaherty, who started making instruments in 1993. Along the way, the craftsmen have had to build their own tools and jigs. Each instrument goes through a series of rigorous sound optimization tests to make sure no mistakes slip through.
“We’re not giant, we’re not massive, we’re just a cool Oregon company,” Beattie says. “We never settle for the status quo.”
Enter to Win, and Catch Blind Pilot Live
If you’d like to strum a myrtlewood guitar for yourself, Breedlove sends its guitars to shops all around Oregon and the U.S., including ABC Music Company in Salem, Guitar Center in Portland and Sunday Guitars in Bend.
Better yet, try to catch Portland’s Blind Pilot, which plays in Bend and Astoria in November 2024. Guitarist and songwriter Israel Nebeker, who was raised on the Oregon Coast, plays a Breedlove.
Sign up for a chance to win a myrtlewood guitar signed by Nebeker here.
