2022 Kenny Hill "Signature CD/SP" CD/IN

This 2022 Kenny Hill "Signature CD/SP" is a double-top classical guitar – cedar outside, spruce inside – with Indian rosewood back and sides, built in his California workshop, and played by Kenny himself in his composition "Canary Jig" on this page.

About the "Signature" Model

Every "Signature" guitar is custom-built, drawing on Kenny's latest designs, building methods and materials – the goal being the finest sound, playability and beauty he can achieve.

Double-Top Construction

At its heart is a double top, an idea that goes back to Dammann and Wagner: a honeycomb-like Nomex core bonded between an outer skin of cedar and an inner skin of spruce. Borrowed from ultra-light aircraft construction, the technique gives a soundboard that is very light and, thanks to its doming, very stiff – which serves both tone and stability. To the eye it is simply cedar. Light lattice bracing completes a structure that is durable but flexible.

Further features: dual soundports, a raised fingerboard, a truss rod for easy neck adjustment and a 20th fret for players who need a high C natural.

Kenny Hill: Guitarist and Guitar Maker

Kenny Hill was born in San Jose, California, and is a performing guitarist and composer as well as a guitar maker. Largely self-taught, he began building guitars professionally in the 1970s in Santa Barbara. In the 1980s he set guitar making aside to raise his four children – though he never stopped performing – and in 1989 he returned to the workbench with copies of historic instruments by Torres, Fleta, Hauser, Rodríguez and Panormo: the beginning of his "Master Series".

From Soledad and Paracho to the Santa Cruz Mountains

In 1993 a grant allowed Kenny to set up a guitar-building shop at Soledad State Prison in California. Two years later he traveled to Paracho, Mexico, as a writer for Acoustic Guitar magazine, to cover a master class led by José Luis Romanillos, and in 1996 he established a workshop there, spending five years building a market for Paracho's guitars. Out of this work grew workshops in California, Mexico and China: his "New World" guitars are made in Guangzhou, China, in a factory of which he is a founding shareholder, and he is designer emeritus and a long-time consultant for Cordoba Guitars.

Kenny's own Signature and Performance models – with double tops, lattice bracing and sound ports – are built by hand in his workshop in Ben Lomond, in the mountains near Santa Cruz, California, by a team of about six craftsmen that includes his son and son-in-law. In 2015 the Guitar Foundation of America honored him with its Industry Leadership Award.

Kenny Hill Guitars at GSI

Many Kenny Hill guitars have passed through our doors, from his Master Series replicas of the great historical makers to his modern Signature and Performance models.