2016 Kenny Hill "Performance 640 SP/CD" SP/IN

This 2016 Kenny Hill "Performance 640 SP/CD" is a double-top classical guitar – spruce outside, cedar inside – with Indian rosewood back and sides, made in his California workshop, with an armrest – heard in Sergei Rudnev's "The Old Lime Tree" played by Steven Lerman on this page.

Kenny Hill's "Performance" Guitar

The "Performance" model grew out of Kenny's work on the Signature: the same kind of "hot-rod" soundboard, in a more basic classical guitar at a lower cost. Spanish heel construction meets a modern top here: the soundboard is a double top of spruce over cedar, braced with a lattice, and there are two soundports in the side of the upper bout. With its 640 mm string length, it offers a more compact feel under the hands while keeping the full sound and volume.

This one also has an added armrest, which reduces wear on the top and sides from the right arm, and a 20th fret for any repertoire needing a high C natural.

Power and Response

Expect power, a wide range of tone colors and great dynamic expressiveness – and, thanks to the lattice bracing, an immediate response with a strong punch. An excellent concert guitar, all in all.

Condition

It is a used example from 2016 and 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.