2010 Kenny Hill "Performance SP/CD" SP/IN

This 2010 Kenny Hill "Performance SP/CD" is a double-top classical guitar – spruce outside, cedar inside – with Indian rosewood back and sides, made in his California workshop.

Kenny Hill's "Performance" Guitar

The "Performance" model grew out of Kenny's work on the Signature: the same kind of "hot-rod" soundboard, in a more basic classical guitar at a lower cost. The neck and body are joined the traditional Spanish way, as one integral unit, while the soundboard is thoroughly modern – a lattice-braced double top with spruce on the outside and cedar inside. Two soundports open in the side of the upper bout.

Sound and Dynamics

Lattice bracing gives this guitar a very quick response with a strong punch, and it has the power, color range and expressive dynamics of a real concert instrument. An excellent concert guitar, all in all.

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.