2020 Kenny Hill "Special CD/SP" CD/IN

This 2020 Kenny Hill "Special CD/SP" is a double-top classical guitar – cedar outside, spruce inside – with Indian rosewood back and sides, built in his California workshop, with doubled sides.

The "Special": A Modified Signature

This is a slightly modified Kenny Hill "Signature" guitar, named the "Special" model, as indicated on the label. The only differences from the Signature are the use of "doubled sides" (in this case the internal layer is cypress) and a different rosette design.

Double Top and Lattice Bracing

At its heart is a double top, an idea that goes back to Dammann and Wagner: a honeycomb-like Nomex core bonded between an outer skin of cedar and an inner skin of spruce. The result is an extremely light, efficient top whose doming adds stiffness – good for the sound and for long-term stability. You would never know from the outside: it looks like an ordinary cedar top, though the method comes from ultra-light aviation. Underneath, lightweight lattice bracing makes it durable yet flexible.

Other features include dual soundports, a raised fingerboard, a truss rod for easy neck adjustment and a 20th fret for players who need a high C natural.

Condition

Although used, the guitar is in excellent condition, with no prior damage or repairs – only some very 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.