Company profile

Beltona began as a partnership between Steve Evans and Bill Johnson in the UK in 1990. A luthier and engineer respectively and sharing an interest in resonator instruments, they set out to produce a couple of instruments for themselves replicating the best features of the originals but also making adjustments and improvements where they were needed.

A business grew from this, producing the finest quality, handcrafted metal instruments at a time when these were not being made by anyone else.

Full Address
Beltona Resonator Instruments - 7 Tangahoe Street - Paekakariki 5034 - Kapiti
E-mail: steve@beltona.net

Beltona is a highly specialised enterprise and continues to break new ground by now producing quality, handcrafted carbon and glass fibre instruments. The idea for this came in the mid-1990s primarily to cut down on production costs and time, however, the discovery of the advantages of this material over metal was a huge bonus. The improvements were in the areas of sound projection, weight, strength and ease and speed of production. With the success of this development, Beltona had moved from producing both types of instruments to concentrating solely on those made of resin by 2002.

The first instruments made were tricones (the most difficult instrument to construct) followed by single resonators, ukuleles, mandolins and the innovative electro-resonators and mandola.

Beltona moved from the UK to New Zealand in 1998 where it is currently based.