2025 Kenny Hill "Torres 640" SP/CSAR

This 2025 Kenny Hill "Torres 640" is a classical guitar with a spruce top and CSA rosewood back and sides, modeled on the first-epoch guitars of Antonio de Torres – and heard in Kenny's own "Voices" and in Jack Sanders' Renaissance pieces on this page.

Based on Torres' First Epoch in Sevilla

Antonio de Torres, the "father of the modern guitar", was the first to establish most of the design principles that set the standard for virtually every guitar maker after him. Kenny Hill based this guitar on Torres' first-epoch period, while Torres was working in Sevilla. Being smaller bodied, it has the classic Torres fan bracing system with 7 fans (Torres would sometimes use 5 on smaller-bodied guitars) and a beautiful, more compact body shape in all dimensions – including the string length, which comes in at a very comfortable 640 mm.

Rosette and Materials

It has an elegant rosette with a checkerboard mosaic flanked on either side by green herringbone, matched in the soundboard purflings. The materials are beautiful: a gorgeous spruce top with some subtle bear-claw markings and cross-grain "aguas" from the high-quality quartersawn cut, and a lush set of CSA rosewood for the back and sides.

Sound and Condition

The sound is strong, with singing highs and solid basses – ideal for players seeking a smaller instrument with a full concert sound. Although a second-hand guitar, it is in excellent condition with minimal playing 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.