2022 Kenny Hill “Signature Legacy 640 SP/CD” SP/IN

This 2022 Kenny Hill "Signature Legacy 640 SP/CD" is a 640 mm-scale double-top classical guitar (spruce outside, cedar inside) with Indian rosewood back and sides, built with ergonomic shaping and True Temperament frets – played by Kenny himself in his composition "Twilight" on this page.

The "Signature Legacy": Ergonomics and True Temperament

The "Signature Legacy" is Kenny's newest take on his Signature, adding two features: ergonomic shaping and True Temperament frets. The body tapers slightly from the treble to the bass side, so it settles comfortably against the player, and it has an unusually wide armrest and a relief cut in the back. The armrest does more than spare the forearm – it changes the posture of the right arm, drawing the shoulder back for a more natural, relaxed position – while the back relief softens the point where the guitar leans against the body.

True Temperament Frets

With True Temperament fretting, each note on the fingerboard is individually compensated, because the six strings differ in tension and density, and each string stretches differently along the length of the neck. The point is not a new scale, but playing the equal-tempered scale more accurately – and most players adjust to it right away. Anders Thidell developed the system in Sweden; in the classical guitar world, Kenny Hill has been its main champion.

Double-Top Construction

The soundboard is a "double top", a design first pioneered by Dammann, Wagner and others, with two very thin skins of wood – spruce outside, cedar underneath – and a core of Nomex between them. This makes for an extremely light and efficient soundboard, and it is domed to maximize stiffness at the same time – important for both the sound and the structural stability. Outwardly it looks like a normal spruce soundboard; the technique is borrowed from ultra-light aviation. A lightweight lattice of braces keeps it durable but flexible.

Add to that dual soundports, a raised fingerboard, a truss rod for easy neck adjustment and a 20th fret for players who need a high C natural.

All told, a guitar that brings together everything Kenny has learned in decades as both a luthier and a player.

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.