2017 Kenny Hill "Torres" SP/MP

This 2017 Kenny Hill "Torres" is a smaller-bodied classical guitar with a bear-claw spruce top and tightly flamed maple back and sides, after the first-epoch guitars of Antonio de Torres.

After the Sevilla Torres Guitars

Torres was the first to establish most of the design principles that became the standard for the modern guitar. Kenny based this model on the guitars from Torres' first epoch in Sevilla – smaller bodied, with the classic 7-fan bracing (Torres sometimes used 5 on his smaller guitars) and a beautiful, more compact body in all dimensions, string length included.

Maple and Bear-Claw Spruce

Its elegant rosette – checkerboard mosaic flanked on either side by green herringbone – is matched in the soundboard purflings. The materials are beautiful: a spruce top with generous amounts of bear claw, and a beautiful, tightly flamed maple for the back and sides.

Sound

The sound is strong, with singing highs and solid basses – a smaller instrument with a full concert sound.

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.