2012 Kenny Hill "Performance 640 SP/CD" SP/IN

This 2012 Kenny Hill "Performance 640 SP/CD" is a double-top classical guitar – spruce outside, cedar inside – with Indian rosewood back and sides, made in his California workshop, donated to the GSI Foundation.

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. Traditional where it counts – the integral Spanish neck-to-body joint – and modern where it makes a difference: a double top with an spruce exterior and cedar interior, lattice bracing and two side soundports in the upper bout. The shorter 640 mm string length gives a more compact playing area – a popular choice – with no loss of sound or volume.

GSI Foundation

This guitar was donated to our non-profit charitable organization, the GSI Foundation. Guitar sales through the GSI Foundation raise money to directly benefit music education in public schools.

Sound

This guitar is powerful, allowing for a wide range of color and an extremely expressive dynamic range. The lattice bracing also gives it a very quick response with a strong punch. An excellent concert guitar, all in all.

Condition

A used example from 2012, it is in excellent condition with no damage or repairs, and only very modest signs of previous playing.

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.