All of us at the Guild office were saddened to hear of the passing of Ted Beringer. Ted was a loyal Guild member for the past twenty-eight years and attended and exhibited at many conventions with his dear wife Pete. His obituary in the Billings Gazette states, “His passion was instrument building. He started with various designs for guitars in the early 1950s and continued exploring until his final days. All of his instruments were innovative, beautiful, and one of a kind. His favorite answer when asked if he would build a guitar for someone was that he built every one of them to suit himself. If he didn’t want you to have one, there wasn’t enough money in the world to buy one; if he thought you were suited to a particular instrument, he would make it easy for you to obtain it. In spite of that philosophy, or perhaps because of it, examples of his art can be found in deserving hands worldwide.”

Ted Kellison of Billings wrote in Ted’s obituary guest book, “I always thought that Ted was cut from the same cloth as Leo Fender and Les Paul. The most endearing thing about Ted, though, was that he was driven in his art strictly by the love and the amazing passion that sustained him through it all. He didn’t build guitars because he wanted to be famous nor to get rich. He’d have built with the same zeal if he’d never sold a single guitar! He fearlessly defied tradition and was the first to laugh at his failures (though they were few), but he lit up like a kid on Christmas morning when he listened to someone play one of his successes!”

— GAL Staff