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About Ribbecke
Tom Ribbecke has spent his long career perfecting his craft and pushing the limits of design. He developed the HalflingTMdesign in 2003 with the help of renowned bass player (and good friend) Bobby Vega. It’s a unique blend of the Steel String/Classical guitar and the Archtop guitar that offers versatility, enhanced bass response and more feedback suppression. He has combined the best of both worlds for the contemporary guitarist whose literature now crosses over into both worlds.
The HalflingsTMdesign soundboards are a combination of the flat bass side of a Steel String and the arched treble side of an Archtop. They are capable of large full fundamental bass response with the ability to hear and distinguish all the notes of a complex chord when ringing together.
“It’s almost as if makers are trending toward more flat top characteristics in their archtops. Ribbecke has taken this trend and twisted it into the Halfling, which uses an odd bracing system that gives an archtop-like bottom end, and flat-top-like uppers... The lower strings are more resonant sounding than any archtop I’ve played, yet never sound flabby or uncontrolled. The uppers have a little flat top ‘shimmer’”.
- Mark Guest
With the creation of the first HalflingTMdesign an opportunity emerged to create a new company, Ribbecke Guitar Corporation (RGC), based on this design. This new company was founded to build high quality, made-in-the-USA guitars and basses.
“I’ve always wanted to get my high end archtop guitars into the hands of more players, and RGC allows me to do this because they're more affordable. I've found a way to make a superior production guitar with the same artistic design and discriminating sound quality people expect from my high end Ribbecke guitars.”
-Tom Ribbecke
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