Repurposing Perfect Harmony Here in the Texas Hill Country

Rafael Aviles

Story and photos by Rafael Aviles, BEC Staff Writer

To say Neil Peterson is a mild-mannered individual would be like saying it gets a little warm in Texas during the summer. It really doesn’t tell you half the story.

Peterson was a high school basketball coach at Texas Military Institute in San Antonio before he accepted the job as head coach in Bandera.

Peterson is a spiritual man, and it was in Bandera that he realized coaching really wasn’t his calling. So he opened a custom cabinet shop on his property off of State Highway 16. The business did well, but Peterson often found himself unchallenged, he said.

That’s when a greater plan was revealed to him. He saw an article in a magazine on how to build a homemade flat-top fiddle. He built it and tried to play it, he said. There was one small obstacle in his way. He didn’t know how to play the fiddle.

He took the instrument to his church organist who helped him get the country violin tuned and ready for play. What started as a fun little side project to fight boredom turned into a passion, and today Peterson builds some of the finest hand-crafted guitars in the world.

These instruments do more than hold their own against those made by name-brand acoustic guitar companies. “I’ve been told that folks have sold their Martins or their Taylors to be able to afford a Peterson,” he said.

Owner Neil Peterson plays a handmade Peterson Acoustics guitar

Rafael Aviles

What makes these works of art sound so good? The woods he chooses. The guitars are made of wood you can find just about anywhere here in the Hill Country. Then there is a special ingredient.

Peterson takes wood from old pianos that are about to be tossed. In doing so, he gets tones that have been hammered into these old players over the years. The result is hard to argue with, and his acoustic guitars deliver a unique sound other woods could never achieve.

Peterson is a contemplative man who discovered himself by the path he chose.

“I enjoy repurposing wood,” he said. “Someone told me that I don’t just repurpose wood, I repurposed my life. I was a coach and now a guitar maker. I had never thought about that before, but it’s true.”

BEC has been powering Peterson Acoustics since it was a cabinet shop, and we love sharing the stories of our members. Neil Peterson is one of those stories.

For more information about Peterson Acoustics, you can visit PetersonAcoustics.com or Facebook.com/PetersonAcoustics.