2015 Kenny Hill "Performance 640 SP/CD" SP/MP

This 2015 Kenny Hill "Performance 640 SP/CD" is a double-top classical guitar – spruce outside, cedar inside – with Maple back and sides, made in his California workshop.

A Hill Workshop Concert Guitar

Kenny spent close to two years developing his "Performance" series as a concert guitar that would cost less than the Signature without giving up its sound and dynamic capacity. It is built like a Spanish guitar, with the neck and body integral, but its top is a lattice-braced double top, the outer layer spruce and the inner cedar; dual soundports in the side let the player hear more of the guitar. It also has a shorter 640 mm string length, very popular with players looking for a more compact playing area without any loss of sound or volume.

Like the Signature, its double top has a Nomex core between the spruce and cedar layers.

A Powerful, Punchy Sound

Power is the first impression, followed by a wide range of color and a very expressive dynamic range; the response, thanks to the lattice, is quick and punchy. All in all, an extremely good concert guitar.

Condition

Although second-hand, it is in excellent condition, with no damage or repairs and only very modest signs of having been played.

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.