Iseman Guitars began in Hawaii, where Mark Iseman built instruments shaped by the islands’ deep relationship with music, wood, and the lap steel guitar. The sound of Hawaiian steel guitar has always carried a particular kind of openness: strings played across the lap, notes sliding into one another, and a voice that can feel at once bright, mournful, and wide as the horizon.
That tradition helped inspire Mark’s Weissenborn-style lap steels. The original Weissenborn instruments were developed in the early twentieth century after Hawaiian players introduced the world to a new way of playing guitar. Their hollow-neck construction created a distinctive resonance, designed for an instrument played horizontally across the lap. Mark’s versions honor that history while being built one at a time for today’s players.
Before starting Iseman Guitars, Mark spent years building metal-body resonator guitars, mandolins, and other instruments for National Reso-Phonic in California. He later built custom ukuleles for Kanileʻa Ukulele on Oahu. Those experiences shaped a practical, player-first approach to the work: build carefully, listen closely, and let the instrument speak for itself.
Today, Mark works from an off-grid homestead in the mountains of Northern California. The setting is different, but the approach remains the same. Surrounded by forest, weather, tools, and the daily rhythm of mountain life, he builds acoustic guitars, Hawaiian lap steels, and ukuleles with patience and close attention to the materials in front of him.
The goal has never been to chase novelty. It is to make instruments with a clear voice, an honest feel, and the kind of character that grows more familiar with every year they are played.
