A Message from Kenny Hill

2023 Hill Guitar Company Updates

Hello All. I’m happy to finally send you all an update along with a newly rebuilt website. We have been negligent on the website for too long to remember, but we’re finally putting things in order. Hill Guitar is alive and well here in the coastal mountains near Santa Cruz California. We’ve managed through wildfires, drought, flooding, landslides, heat waves, cold spells, and some sort of pandemic over the last few years. Nowadays the abnormal the only thing that seems normal. Our business and lifestyle is different than it was three years ago, but it’s still pretty good. Here at Hill Guitar the staff is lean and mean, with three and a half workers, plus myself. Everybody is very good at their jobs, really the best in the world. Because of our small staff and more limited production these days we are fulfilling custom individual orders almost exclusively. It's increasingly rare to have the time to make “spec” guitars of our model designs, though it does happen, and we do have some inventory. We have yet to run out of custom orders with nothing else to do. We are still delivering promptly and mostly on time, usually around 6 months. The quality of the guitars coming out of this shop is better than anything I have seen in my life. The variety, inspiration and inventiveness has not diminished and the results are very exciting. New World Guitar still is happening at a rather slow and unpredictable progression. We haven’t finished experiencing a perfect storm, starting with a trade war with China, a pandemic and quarantines, travel bans, serious interruptions with shipping and import obstacles, and to top it off our main supplier had to relocate their entire operation due to gentrification of our old neighborhood and government Eminent Domain. The move alone meant building new buildings, relocating over two hundred workers, a top to bottom upgrade and at least a years work. The flow of guitars is trying to get back to something like normal, but still, abnormal is the new normal. We are expecting a new shipment around mid July 2023, we’ll see…. For myself as a musician I have been able to realize a long long goal, composing my own music for guitar. I know that seems a little crazy and distracting, but over the last 3 plus years I’ve written over a dozen compositions for solo guitar, some stuff for ensemble, done a fair amount of performing and recording, and no end is in sight. Though I originally self-published the pieces as they’ve come out, now Doberman-Yppan, Producions d”Oz are publishing my works, and really, they are the very best publisher possible. I’m able to see more and more video and audio recordings being released as well as live performances by other guitarists, not only me. It’s really wonderful to have — at my age — something to be learning, developing; expressive and fulfilling. Very exciting! I’m trying not to travel so much. I haven’t been to China since 2019. I love my home and my family around, and the travel is not only a lot of work, but there is most often something going on at home I don’t want to miss. I’d say I’m trying to chill out, slow down a bit, but somehow that’s more of an idea than a reality. Still, I’m not complaining. Hill Guitar is still in the business of building some of the finest guitars in the world. We have a wide spectrum of features, creativity, expertise, and we always try to do precisely what the customer needs. Our team and workshop is fabulous. And hopefully now we’ll be able to keep up with the website and online presence to just the right degree. Stay tuned. Kenny Hill June 2023