2014 Kenny Hill "Rodriguez" CD/CSAR

This 2014 Kenny Hill "Rodriguez" is a classical guitar with a cedar top and CSA rosewood back and sides, built in the style of Miguel Rodríguez's guitars of the 1970s and 1980s – played by Brian Rodriguez in Schubert's "Ständchen" on this page.

After Miguel Rodríguez, Inside and Out

This is one of the best "copies" we've seen. Even the internal bracing follows the famous 5-fan system from this era of Rodríguez, so it is very authentic not just aesthetically but structurally. The beautiful "rose rosette", iconic for this maker, is replicated beautifully, and the materials are absolutely stunning, including a high-grade set of CSA rosewood with dramatic, gorgeously textured grain.

Sound

The guitar has great clarity and precision of tone. The trebles are big and meaty but not heavy or lumbering, and the basses are driving and fat but not boomy. It also has a very loud tone – again, a quality found in the original Rodríguez guitars.

Details and Condition

Fitted with Sloane tuners and French polished, with an adjustable truss rod for quick and easy setup. Although previously owned, the guitar is in excellent condition with only minor wear in the finish.

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.