Like any good beard we’re growing constantly,
and we’re nowhere near our limits.
Goldbeard Guitars is a guitar and ukulele building school, and also a guitar manufacture and repair company based in Brightwater, in the beautiful Nelson Tasman region of New Zealand’s South Island.
We offer short guitar-making and ukulele-building courses, build guitars to commission using customer-selected designs, components and timbers, and bring old and damaged instruments back to life through a quality repair service.
The company was founded in Wellington, New Zealand, in 2011 and moved to its current location in 2021. It has welcomed customers from as near as next-door to as far away as Europe, South America, Africa, Japan and the US. Players of Goldbeard guitars include international musician Sinéad O’Connor and local legend Warren Maxwell (Trinity Roots), and over 150 students have graduated from one of our guitar and ukulele-making classes since they first became available in early 2013.
We see our approach to instrument building as our way of practicing good energy. Because we think good energy is what it’s all about - from the thud of a knuckle against rough plank to the vibration of fingers on strings. Our goal is to see our customers carry this good energy forward: igniting themselves, lighting up stages and warming up hearths.
Built on a foundation of precision science, our values are based around business integrity and loyalty to our community. We practice fair, sustainable trade, and once you’ve joined the Goldbeard family you will always be well looked after.
Head-tinkerer
dave likes home baking and strong coffee.
he dislikes being beaten at table tennis.
Dave Gilberd has spent a lifetime working with fine machinery - currently as owner-operator of the Brightwater Motors vehicle mechanics workshop but also as a qualified aircraft engineer, high-tech engineer, film set fabricator and motorbike fan-boy. However, since taking a short instrument-building course in 2003 his heart has been most taken with guitar-building and further training at the Totnes School of Guitar-Making in the UK led to the launch of Goldbeard Guitars.
Dave has brought countless guitars into being - ranging from electro-acoustic, small body and blues style - has taught somewhere around 200 students the craft of instrument-building, and revived numerous old and damaged pieces.
Dave lives in Lower Moutere near Motueka in the top of New Zealand’s South Island with his wife Natalie, young sons Karsiah and Ethan, an oh-so-nearly refurbished '71 Peugeot sedan.
Sideburn
Phil likes to take 1 hour to drink a single cup of coffee.
he dislikes the fact that the teNnis table is not a pool table
Phil Fahey is Goldbeard’s electric guitar specialist. His roots are in professional photography and design but his heart is firmly stuck on guitars.
He made his first guitar as a response to a particularly ugly electric guitar he owned which needed a body remoulding and led to him building an entirely new guitar from scratch!
A Christmas present for his brother in 2012 soon followed and Phil has been turning them out ever since - fine-tuning his style through practice, practice, practice.
His involvement in Goldbeard has brought a stunning collection of electric gats into the Goldbeard mix that merge both the look and feel of traditional styles with Goldbeard’s unique identity.
Phil lives in Island Bay, Wellington when he isn’t 'living' among the dust and wood shavings at the workshop.
Hair Guitarist
Natalie likes to pretend she can play the guitar.
She dislikes Dave always winning at table tennis.
Natalie Gilberd is our strategy gem. What she lacks in guitar-playing prowess she makes up for in marketing muscle, hijacking Dave's reverie on wood-seeking road trips to discuss strategy, budgets and all of the practical businessy things that bore most normal people.
While she may turn a good car drive into a bad idea, her solid background in marketing, communication and design makes her well placed to step into the driving seat when it comes to our brand.
Natalie is also Dave's wife, full-time mum to sons Karsiah and Ethan, and Goldbeard’s founding business partner.