Richard Hoover / Santa Cruz Guitar Company

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©2011 SANTA CRUZ GUITAR COMPANY . The scale length is . , just like the d-28. This is the , just like the d-28. scale and to have the top braced to in diameter, the soundhole is slightly smaller than the in diameter, D, F and H to 111⁄16-inch and switched the headstocks on the D, F and H to 111⁄16-inch style.” D and H to the squared-off Once the older models were overhauled, Hoover began looking for ways to expand the line. One trend that caught everyone by surprise in the early 1990s was the revival of interest in 12-fret guitars. Prior to the introduction of the 14-fret Martin OM in 1929, most flattop guitars were built While the new 14-fret guitars never with 12-fret necks. completely replaced the older style, practically every serious player went for the longer neck and its easy access to higher frets. In the early 1960s there was a brief vogue for the archaic looking 12-fret guitars among the folk revivalists, but by 1970 they were back in closets and under beds. In the late 1980s guitarists began to realize that 12-fret guitars They usually were particularly well-suited to fingerpicking. had wider fretboards, which made the left-hand fingering on The bodies were longer than their complex passages easier. 14-fret counterparts, which produced more volume, and the bridge was closer to the center of the top, which increased the As the prices of bass response and overall clarity of tone. vintage 12-frets from Martin and other builders began to climb, modern builders stepped in to fill the demand. “When people first started asking us to make 12-fret guitars in the early 1990s, I just had to laugh,” Hoover says. “I felt like asking them, ‘Where were you in 1978 when we were Starting in the mid-1990s making the first version of the H?’ a 12-fret 00. we started making a 12-fret 000 and, a little later, also started making 12-fret Ds, which were just cannons. I We was very proud to have Norman Blake play one of our 12-fret such a Rice. He’s Tony Ds on the second record he made with stickler for vintage tone; having him play our guitar was a sign we got it right.” Along with bringing out new body sizes, SCGC began to variations on their standard models. One that was offer Artist. “I Vintage heart was the particularly dear to Hoover’s always loved the sound of mahogany guitars,” he says, “but by the mid 1990s the cost of mahogany had gone up quite a I bit and the prices of old d-18s were really not 19 anymore. The shorter scales are just more comfortable not 19 anymore. find the guys that have played Ds with long scales We to play. hands and dodgy backs and all their lives are getting stiffer we’re finding them moving to 000s with short scales out of self-defense. I think we’re going to see more of that in the future.” New Generation A In 2006, the Santa Cruz Guitar Company will celebrate its it will be 40 years For Richard Hoover, 30th anniversary. In since he first dissected (and rebuilt) his Harmony guitar. that time Hoover has gone from a struggling journeyman to the leader of a crew of a dozen skilled builders who produce and built guitars He has designed almost 1000 guitars a year. that are played by some of the finest musicians in the world. He has raised the art of steel-string lutherie to new levels and he has trained some of the most accomplished contemporary luthiers in his workshop. Of all these accomplishments, he is proudest of the last. however, “I think my ultimate legacy will be the builders who came through my shop, learned to build guitars under my direction, and have gone on to carry on the tradition,” he says. “Our first employee was Michael Hornick, who took the job expressly to learn how to build guitars and then went on to did the same thing. He Traugott build Shanti guitars. Jeff percent for five came to us and said that he’d give us 110 years, and then he’d go out on his own. Bill Hardin is building guitars in Hawaii under the Bear Creek name, and Washington.” Roy McAllister is wild things with open tunings; and singer-songwriters like wild things with open tunings; and singer-songwriters Stephen Stills and Joni Mitchell, who were Taylor, James doing very sophisticated musical things on flattop guitars, saw there was a We that had never been heard before. stuff just a big booming dreadnought, need for a guitar that wasn’t something that could record well and could be played fingerstyle as well as flatpicked.” And so the D was born. “The D model was going to be the for the Hoover says. “Luckily one guitar for everybody,” I later learned that making only one growth of the company, the concept was that Anyway, a good idea. such model wasn’t our D would be voiced to have a more balanced tone, with equally good bass and treble response. Our D also had a a width nut, and flatter radius to the fretboard, a 113⁄16-inch The D wasn’t wide, 1⁄8-inch saddle for good intonation. braced like a new Martin, which at the time had straight braces, or an old Martin, which would have had scalloped The braces on our D tapered from the center of the X braces. out towards the sides, which gave us the balanced bass-to-treble response we were after.” Another unique feature of the D was the use of koa for the practically every luthier of note uses Today, sides and back. koa, but back then it was a very unusual choice. Koa had been used fairly regularly in the early part of the 20th century, particularly for ukuleles and Hawaiian steel guitars built by But when the Weissenborn. makers like Martin, Knutsen and Great Depression hit in the 1930s, the interest in all things Hawaiian faded and the fine sound of koa wood was forgotten. Ross and Davis were searching for a tonewood that Hoover, and koa fit had a unique character both sonically and visually, Koa also seemed to solve a marketing the bill admirably. “I prefer problem that was bedeviling the fledgling company. the tone of mahogany to rosewood,” Hoover explains. have the “Rosewood has a warm, round tone, but it doesn’t I wanted articulate sound, the snap and clarity of mahogany. to build mahogany guitars, but the problem was that, at the time, mahogany was positioned in the market as the blue-collar sister of rosewood, the cheaper alternative to rosewood. were out to change the world with our guitars and we “We may have been naïve about a lot of things, but we were smart ready for a enough to figure out that the world wasn’t Bruce and Bill had played a premium mahogany guitar. couple of 1920s Martin 00s that were made of koa and we thought that it would be a good alternative. It had a similar tone to mahogany and it looked so nice. In retrospect, the choice of koa may have slowed our progress in the market, because it was just one more new thing that we were offering, were just about We and perhaps it was one thing too many. the first company to start using koa in the 1970s, but, as we always the best place to be.” discovered back then, first isn’t H The year 1978 was an important one for the Santa Cruz William building guitars, After two years of Guitar Company. live on the meager amount Davis discovered that he couldn’t good health, a very of money that was trickling in. “Youth, supportive sweetheart and the ability to live on nothing helped me to survive in those days,” Hoover recalls. “Bill felt so Bruce and I bought out his share. he needed more money, scrunched up in the left-hand corner of the fret pane: to I still think this is our best design. It balance the look visually. was a really good guitar for jazz and sophisticated fingerstyle playing, but it worked well for blues and some of the earthier music as well.” the idea of a flattop guitar with a carved back Unfortunately, to market, so, as they did with the proved to be too difficult They switched to a H, the SCGC crew redesigned the guitar. a plainer fretboard and made the cutaway an flat back, offered They also changed the name from FTC, which stood option. The image of the FTC to the simpler F. Cutaway, Top for Flat lived on for much longer than the guitar did. For years it was featured on the cover of the SCGC catalog and in their ads. In fact, the ad was so enticing that Eric Clapton called up after seeing it in a guitar magazine and ordered an FTC of his own. From the start, the guitars of SCGC exhibited an almost wanted the guitars to look maniacal attention to detail. “We good, now matter how closely you examined them,” Hoover says. “I had worked with a Swedish finish carpenter before I met Bruce and Bill and learned a number of cool techniques that I was able to transfer to guitar making. I had also studied a number of books on violin making, which gave me the idea of steel-string-guitar building. tradition of starting a different American steel-string guitar was born in a factory and The and Gibson were set up to Washburn companies like Martin, produce guitars in high numbers. Many of the builders who started around the same time we did tried to emulate that style Larivee and a few Taylor, of building and, in the case of others, have become very good at it. “But I wanted to build steel-string guitars in the same kind of small-workshop setting that Spanish guitars or violins were I felt we could maintain greater control That way, built in. over the final product. I wanted a workshop where we could take each particular piece of wood and voice it so it sounded as good as possible. It took a while at first to work out the system, but today I think we do an excellent job of building guitars that sound the way we intend them to.” TR As if losing a partner and launching two new models weren’t enough to keep Hoover and Ross on their toes in 1978, they Rice that would have a Tony also began a relationship with Anger had fortunes. “Darol major impact on the company’s Tony kept in touch after the mandolin project and he brought to my house a couple of times to show him what we were had been playing his 1935 D-28, doing,” Hoover says. “Tony White had once owned, and he asked us the one that Clarence want a replica, a to make a modern version of it. He didn’t copy or a direct replacement, but rather an instrument that That D-28 has a very was a complement to his old Martin. wanted a -guitar with slightly Tony almost tubby tone. bassy, more treble and midrange that would work well in the studio Also, he wanted he was doing. for the more modern stuff something that could be easily replaced because his old guitar was irreplaceable.” Rice let SCGC have the d-28 for a while so they could take The D-28 had seen some hard measurements and clean it up. The most noticeable times and some dubious repair work. soundhole and the replaced, bound changes were the enlarged fretboard. Nobody is really sure why the soundhole was but the most likely theory is that the top had enlarged, edges, and someone become badly worn around the hole’s also the slightly shorter 24.25 Rice currently plays. Tony model that OM Ri effort had stalled, so McGuire helped him complete it and had stalled, so McGuire helped him complete effort the fundamentals of guitar making. then coached him in Hoover to another amateur builder McGuire also introduced who made steel-string guitars in the named Jim Patterson, Martin tradition. were extremely helpful when I was “Both Bruce and Jim says. “Bruce introduced me to the basic starting out,” Hoover and Jim showed me how to refine techniques of guitar building, helped me learn to do things like make what I was doing and I owe both men a lot and I’m extremely dovetail neck joints. they did.” grateful they took the time to show me what set up shop as a After Hoover had built a few guitars, he the name Otis B. Rodeo on my “I used repairman and luthier. bronco as a logo,” he guitars and had a cowboy on a bucking I built a says. “That was my stage name when I performed. make I didn’t few dreadnoughts in the Martin style, but much money doing it.” which led to an Hoover traveled around town by bicycle, on Hoover encounter that would later have a huge impact riding by an old “I was and the Santa Cruz Guitar Company. and I noticed some house one day in 1974 Victorian he recalls. “I was mandolin parts hanging up in a window,” and it turned out that really curious so I knocked on the door were making f-5 style Anger and David Morse Darol inlay on the mandolins there, complete with ‘The Gibson’ a completed guitar peghead. I rushed home and brought back they were impressed and one that I was still working on, and join them in their enough with me that they invited me to all had too much beatnik We mandolin building cooperative. so few in us to actually pay ourselves, but we sold I remember when instruments, we eventually had to split up. I left I had the choice of taking a mandolin or $200. Man, I spent that money fast.” By 1976 Richard Hoover had become a well-known figure in That year two repairmen growing music scene. Santa Cruz’s most visible model. Over the years the specs on the SCGC’s musical style evolved. guitar would change as Rice’s booming old pre-war “Initially we were trying to do a tubby, was Tony Martin,” Hoover says. “When we first met him, playing fiddle tunes and bluegrass songs, but he was also music ‘Dawg’ starting to play Coltrane, Django, Grisman’s Rice Model Tony and all kinds of other things. Our current has evolved along with him, and now we have a guitar that is well-suited for contemporary bluegrass playing, that works well in the studio and on stage and sounds good on lead and Rice Model is closer in Tony the current rhythm. In a way, think tone to the first guitar we built for him, the one he didn’t he liked.” Rice Model. Tony two versions of the SCGC offers Today, The standard version has Indian rosewood sides and back, a At Sitka spruce top, mahogany neck and ebony fretboard. 41⁄4 Rice Tony The famous Martin d-28. hole on Rice’s enlarged more closely replicates the d-28’s Professional, however, The sides and back are Brazilian rosewood and the features. soundhole is the same diameter of 49⁄16 – the – and body depth , which lessens the string tension and to 25.25 000 In 1989, Richard Hoover bought out his partner Bruce Ross, who was ready to move on to other things. Now that he was free to run SCGC on his own, Hoover decided to revamp the line and to update some of the features to meet the needs of contemporary players. “By 1990 we had four different had the original SCGC headstock shapes,” Hoover says. “We headstock, which we used on the Ds and Hs; the square Rice and the OM; the Tony headstock, which came on the We pointed FS headstock; and the asymmetrical F headstock. also had a variety of standard neck widths, and all of it was getting confusing. So we standardized the nut width on the The FS had rosewood binding with cobalt blue purfiing, no fretboard inlays, a cutaway and a pointed headstock inspired found that the by the innovative guitars of Steve Klein. “We pointed headstock kept the strings in a straighter line than our other headstock shapes,” Hoover says. “This style helped keep the strings from binding in the nut when going into the altered tunings that so many players were experimenting but its spartan The FS was a modest but steady seller, with.” appointments and elegant shape had a major influence on These days so many builders are offering many luthiers. small jumbos with wood binding and a cutaway that it’s As Hoover says about their early use of becoming cliché. always the best place to be.” koa, “first isn’t “The Tony Rice sort of happened to us, as it were, but the FS Tony “The was our first attempt to come up with a guitar designed for a specific style from the ground up,” Hoover says. “The FS all got We was also the first guitar we designed collectively. together and talked about the modern fingerstyle playing that was going on at the time and we brainstormed on what we thought the F body We thought the market would want. Age guitar shape was a perfect place to start, and since New we tried to minimize the amount of metal was so popular, feel.” and plastic on the instrument to give it a more organic about every other acoustic guitar on the market at the time. “But there is another thing I’ve noticed,” Hoover adds. “I’ve When I was 19 most always made guitars for people my age. of my customers were around that age and now that I’m in we’re Well, my 50s, many of my customers are in their 50s. Another recent addition to the catalog has been a series of slope-shouldered Ds based on the classic Gibson guitars of the 1930s and 1940s. “I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for sunburst Gibsons,” Hoover says. “They had such a I started Remember, wonderful look that is just so cowboy. out as Otis B. Rodeo, so it was probably inevitable that I Vintage building a We’re would build something like this. Jumbo, which has our standard 25.375-inch scale length and Southerner is essentially the Vintage The tapered braces. same thing, but with a shorter 24.750-inch scale length that This guitar is a bit of a makes it a bit easier to play. conundrum to me because everything I’ve learned over the years about acoustic physics says that a guitar with its bridge sound as good placement so close to the soundhole shouldn’t as it does. But it has a full tone and really shines on blues and interesting about Another thing that’s earthier styles like that. one of our first big guitars Southerner is that it’s Vintage the getting more and more requests We’re with a shorter scale. for shorter scales. Part of it is the sound, which is a little mellower than a long scale guitar. PW VS & PW Almost from the day the Santa Cruz Guitar Company was founded, players have perceived them as expensive guitars. Part of the problem was that their most visible and Rice or cutaway F with Tony well-known models, such as the deco fretboard inlays, areexpensive, but many of their other models are about the same price as guitars with similar features from competitors like Martin and Collings. In the late or Pre-war the PW 1990s Richard Hoover decided to offer came up with a guitar that was much plainer than series. “We our other guitars, with simpler trim and so forth,” he says. affect the cosmetic appointments, we don’t “By stripping off This lets us sell the tone, just the time it takes to build them. them in rosewood and offer We them at a lower price point. At first we were only mahogany in both the D and OM size. them for a limited time, but they were so going to offer well-received that we added them to the standard line.” “The Sonia H is built for Sonia of Disappear Fear,” Hoover “The Sonia H is built for Sonia of Disappear Fear,” explains. “Her first SCGC was an H with the original D peghead, 14-frets and electronics. She has an intense following worldwide and when she approached us about doing a signature model, we thought it sounded like a good idea. Oddly enough, most of them are sold through her fan club and not as many through stores.” Fear. “Janis Ian had this great little guitar that Lloyd Baggs “Janis Ian had this great little Fear. back before he started making pickups.” made for her, very Hoover says. “Janis is a hellacious guitarist, but she’s It also needed petite and wanted a guitar that fit her. state-of-the-art electronics so she could get her sound And it had to be black, with a black nut and saddle. onstage. work out. It that didn’t even tried to get black frets, but We but as she played it on stage was supposed to be a one-off, we started getting orders for it. She strings it up with .010s and it has very low action, a very short scale length, and a shallow body to help reduce feedback. Because the strings are so light, we can brace it extremely lightly and still have a good sound acoustically.” All of this stirring underground caught the attention of the All of this stirring underground had noticed that there was a luthiers in Santa Cruz. “We Hoover change in the way people played acoustic guitar,” Tony White, recalls. “There were flatpickers like Clarence who were mixing jazz and other styles Rice and Dan Crary, with fiddle tunes; fingerpickers like Kottke and Fahey doing That same year, David Grisman formed the first version of That same year, former mandolin his influential quintet with Hoover’s and flatpicking guitar genius Anger, Darol building partner, In released his first LP, Ackerman also William Rice. Tony that was barely noticed Navel, an event Turtle’s Search of the Ackerman took his though, few years later, A at the time. brand of gentle acoustic-guitar music to the masses by Hill record label and, with it, the Windham launching his Age music movement, which was a significant event in New acoustic-guitar history. In 1976, however, mainstream pop seemed to consist almost In 1976, however, “Convoy” and McCall’s W. entirely of novelty songs like C. “Disco Duck (Part 1),” disco hits like “Love Rick Dees’ Your Rollercoaster” and “(Shake Shake Shake) Shake by formerly reliable stars like Booty” and weaker efforts “Silly Love Songs” and Rod Stewart’s Paul McCartney’s There were rumblings in the acoustic the Night.” “Tonight’s though. Small labels like Kicking Mule and underground, were releasing a steady stream of recordings from Takoma Duck Baker, Dale Miller, artists like Leo Kottke, John Fahey, These records sold very few Robbie Basho and Peter Lang. copies, but it seemed like every copy sold triggered a new player to take up the acoustic guitar. D they needed a Now that the young luthiers had a company, guitar to sell, but coming up with their first model was want to do a straight Martin They knew they didn’t difficult. offer but the music scene in 1976 didn’t or Gibson copy, many clues as to what would sell. One problem was that the pop mainstream was going through one of its periodic bouts singer-songwriters couple of years earlier, A of aimlessness. routinely made the charts, and it was possible for musicians Harry Chapin, Don McLean, Melanie, Taylor, like James 10 hits armed with Top John Denver and Jim Croce to score little more than an acoustic guitar. “One of the first things we had to do with the lawyer was to Hoover says. “Since come up with a name for the company,” seem right to use just one of there were three of us, it didn’t our names. It was the early ’70s, a time when we are all supposed to be letting go of our egos, so it seemed like the about all kinds of names – I thought We thing to do. remember Soquel Guitars, Chinquapin Guitars and Banty agree on Guitars were all contenders – but we couldn’t anything. Our lawyer said we needed to put something on the partnership document and wrote in ‘Santa Cruz Guitar with the understanding we would change it when Company’ we obviously didn’t.” Well, we thought of something better. from Union Grove Music, Bruce Ross and William Davis, William from Union Grove Music, Bruce Ross and to invest in his small approached Hoover with an offer business, and in exchange, he would teach them to build guitars. Hoover was amenable to the idea. Since their investment was quickly spent on wood, tools and rent, they found an attorney who was a guitarist and was willing to do legal work in exchange for their first guitar. the partnership’s F In 1978 SCGC also introduced the FTC (numbered FTC-1), The new which had a flat top and a carved, arched back. guitar had a body silhouette based on the Gibson J-185, which was a small jumbo that was built between 1951 and made the early ones with maple back and sides 1958. “We Hoover recalls. “The idea was to and added a cutaway,” come up with a guitar that had the clarity and punch of an archtop and the warmth and sustain of a flattop. During the early stages of design, the cutaway was so asymmetrical that why we came up with the That’s it looked weird to us. asymmetrical headstock and the deco inlays that were sort of Ironically, the early 13-fret H has become something of a Ironically, item, and many players feel that it is the collector’s best-sounding model SCGC ever made. In 2003 SCGC again teamed up with Paul Hostetter to make a limited run of 15 The series was so well-received that in custom 13-fret Hs. 2004 the model was reintroduced under the designation h-13 and it is now part of the standard line. Rather than abandon the H altogether, Hoover and Ross Rather than abandon the H altogether, They built the made some adjustments to the overall design. guitar with a 12-fret neck, made the body a little shallower and switched to a solid peghead. (At the time, the only way to acquire good tuning machines for a slotted-headstock In steel-string guitar was to rob a set from a vintage guitar. days, SCGC sometimes waited for those pre-Waverly little later, A months until a suitable set of gears turned up.) with a 14-fret neck. the H was also offered “The H had a rich tone, lots of volume and an overall sweet always felt that the 13-fret-neck tone,” Hoover says. “We configuration on that body shape put the bridge in exactly the no denying that those right place on the top, and there’s guitars sound magical. But it was also a crashing failure in the marketplace. It was too small for the time – men just buy smaller guitars, which were perceived as wouldn’t “girly” – and the 13-fret neck was too confusing for most players.” Bruce McGuire was an amateur classical guitar maker who a guitar-making Art Overholtzer, learned his craft from Chico, in the late teacher at California State University, 1960s. Hoover had already started making a guitar but his SCGC – as musicians began to call the That same year, company – introduced their second model, which they The idea for the guitar was brought to them by dubbed the H. a musician, artist and luthier who’d moved to Paul Hostetter, Santa Cruz from Chicago in the 1960s. Hostetter had always Nick Lucas Special, a model that Gibson loved Gibson’s made in various configurations from 1928 to 1941. Hostetter felt that the iteration from around 1930, which featured a slope-shouldered 00 silhouette, a nearly 41⁄2 Hoover and Ross were intrigued by the idea, so working with input from Hostetter they built the first H, which took its name from the initial of the man who suggested it. On the first H, the top, back and sides were made from highly figured koa, the neck joined the body at the 13th fret, and it The guitar was given the serial had a slotted headstock. number H-1, which started the policy of giving each body shape its own number sequence. In 1981, SCGC finally bowed to public pressure and started Rice Model as part of the standard line. It Tony the offering proved to be an immediate success and quickly became “I began looking around for a replacement for my stolen he continues, “and I fell in love with an Epiphone guitar,” at a local store called Union Grove Music, but I didn’t Texan have the money for it so they sent me to Beneficial Finance what I When I explained to the loan officer down the street. as a he mentioned that he built guitars wanted the money for, Right then I told him that I would be by his house hobby. once a week and that he was going to teach me what he I asked him what day of the week would be good for knew. so he said, him, and I think he was amused by my audacity, That was how I met Bruce McGuire, who became my ‘Sure.’ mentor and helped get me started as a luthier.” Bill had a great sense of design and he was instrumental in coming up with the look of our early guitars. He later got a Lucas at Industrial Light and Magic, so he job with George was able to use his considerable talents in a new way.” and a 13-fret neck, was the best-sounding -version. Rice loved his new guitar and promptly began recording with (In a strange it and playing it on stages across the country. coincidence, the serial number on his first Santa Cruz guitar they As more players saw and heard the guitar, was D-28.) began to call up SCGC to order ones just like it. “When we we had an intense desire not to copy started our company, Martin, to make our own mark,” Hoover recalls. “So when we Tony’s, the calls came in asking us to make a guitar like declined the orders by telling people that it was a custom, plan to make any more. But guitar and that we didn’t one-off we finally after fielding thirty or forty calls for that guitar, realized we had something that may have looked like an old herringbone dreadnought, but it was something Martin why people were asking for it.” doing, and that’s wasn’t Richard Hoover is a compact, energetic man with a brown man with a brown Richard Hoover is a compact, energetic He laughs beard that is starting to show streaks of white. the absurdities particularly when he ruminates about easily, about the guitars that but when he talks of the music industry, The area around he and his crew build, he is deadly serious. detritus, his desk is littered with curious bits of instrumental de arame, including the carcass of a Portuguese viola samples of tonewoods, unfinished necks and half-shaped As he sits, he fidgets with his pen, changing his grip bridges. then a on it as if he were grasping a chisel, then a small saw, screwdriver. Hoover then set about making another guitar for Rice, but this time he made sure the guitar had as much bass as looked at what we had done to make our Ds possible. “We The sound balanced and then we undid it all,” Hoover says. the larger SCGC team was curious to know what effect tone, so they contacted soundhole would have on the guitar’s a respected luthier who had studied the Roger Siminoff, acoustics of fretted instruments for years. “He told us about the aperture which stated that the larger the Hemholtz effect, the higher the fundamental pitch on a resonating chamber, in other words, the big soundhole Or, will be in that chamber. accentuated the treble and midrange. So we built the guitar soundhole, and that was what we heard.” with the larger “I had a really nice Martin D-28 and somebody took it,” “I had a really nice Martin D-28 and somebody than a little glee, Hoover says, without rancor and with more Hoover had a favor. realizing the thief had actually done him and that luthier, never given up his dream of becoming a of the Santa long-ago misdeed led directly to his founding which now builds some of the Cruz Guitar Company, finest steel-string guitars. world’s few days later he called up and said the guitar just didn’t “A So we drove back up to pick it have what he was looking for. up and on the way back we stopped by Gryphon [Stringed Alto] and put it on consignment. I think Instruments in Palo I’m pretty sure that Richard Johnston sold it the same day. the guy who bought it never knew that he had the prototype Rice Model.” Tony of what became the Over the next few years he searched in vain for information he searched in vain for information Over the next few years but there were no books in print on about his new passion, He made do with lessons in general the subject at the time. who was a skilled his father, woodworking from Hoover learned many useful techniques and cabinetmaker. but his growing gained experience with a variety of tools, any closer to his goal. Instead, he bring him skills didn’t into becoming a better guitar decided to channel his energy it was with When he moved to Santa Cruz in 1972, player. not a guitar maker. the intention of becoming a guitar player, changed. But when his guitar was stolen, everything After measuring the d-28 inside and out, SCGC built what Rice. “He Tony they believed was the perfect guitar for wanted a guitar that was all bass, at least compared to what said he would take we were making,” Hoover says. “Tony thought we We care of the treble with his picking technique. knew better and made a guitar for him that was as balanced as what we usually did. It was also the first rosewood guitar were really pleased with it and We we ever built, by the way. He had a cold at the in Marin County. Tony we took it up to hear it very time so his ears were plugged up and he couldn’t well, so we left it with him. In 1966 a young Richard Hoover got the notion that he could Hoover got the notion that he could In 1966 a young Richard tone of his old Harmony guitar by somehow improve the its insides. So he took it apart and, more fiddling around with His first attempt it back together. managed to get importantly, but his Harmony sound better, make didn’t at guitar surgery desire to build guitars of his own. it did instill in him the original nut width on the D-28 would have been 13⁄4 was not made by Martin. Some people who have examined the guitar believe Gretsch made the fretboard, and since it had 21 frets instead of the 20 frets common on most acoustic guitars, it may have actually been made for an electric The new fretboard, which was probably installed in model. scale length the late 1950s, slightly shortened the D-28’s from 25.4 gives the guitar a slightly “looser” feel. Hornick and Traugott quickly proved their worth when they Traugott Hornick and helped design a new model called the FS. It was introduced designed in late 1987 and was a variation of the F, The new model featured specifically for playing fingerstyle. a lightly braced cedar top, Indian rosewood sides and back and a very austere appearance, which set it apart from just “When I started building in the early 1970s, there was almost no information on steel-string guitar making. But there were lots of builders across the country in a similar situation, and Taylor we started to network and share information. Bob down in San Diego, Jean Larrivee in Canada, Michael – all were generous with their York Gurian in New why we all progressed so knowledge, and I think that’s When one of us found a new tool or technique we let rapidly. which helped elevate the level of work everyone else know, from all the builders and helped give all of us more credibility in the marketplace.” just cut away the undamaged portions to give the hole a The new fretboard is also symmetrical appearance. The fretboard is narrow at 1 5⁄8 something of mystery. was a sheet-metal worker named Michael Hornick, followed Both men were clear that Traugott. a few months later by Jeff they wanted to work at SCGC so they could learn to build guitars and eventually move out on their own. “I remembered how Bruce McGuire and Jim Patterson had helped me get started,” Hoover says. “I thought I should continue that tradition, so I hired Michael and Jeff.” By: Michael John Simmons / December 2008 John Simmons By: Michael Richard Hoover / Santa Cruz Guitar Company Cruz Guitar Hoover / Santa Richard In 1966 a young Richard Hoover got the notion that he could effort had stalled, so McGuire helped him complete it and somehow improve the tone of his old Harmony guitar by then coached him in the fundamentals of guitar making. fiddling around with its insides. So he took it apart and, more McGuire also introduced Hoover to another amateur builder importantly, managed to get it back together. His first attempt named Jim Patterson, who made steel-string guitars in the at guitar surgery didn’t make his Harmony sound better, but Martin tradition. it did instill in him the desire to build guitars of his own. “Both Bruce and Jim were extremely helpful when I was Over the next few years he searched in vain for information starting out,” Hoover says. “Bruce introduced me to the basic about his new passion, but there were no books in print on techniques of guitar building, and Jim showed me how to refine the subject at the time. He made do with lessons in general what I was doing and helped me learn to do things like make woodworking from his father, who was a skilled dovetail neck joints. I owe both men a lot and I’m extremely cabinetmaker. Hoover learned many useful techniques and grateful they took the time to show me what they did.” gained experience with a variety of tools, but his growing skills didn’t bring him any closer to his goal. Instead, he After Hoover had built a few guitars, he set up shop as a decided to channel his energy into becoming a better guitar repairman and luthier. “I used the name Otis B. Rodeo on my player. When he moved to Santa Cruz in 1972, it was with guitars and had a cowboy on a bucking bronco as a logo,” he the intention of becoming a guitar player, not a guitar maker. says. “That was my stage name when I performed. I built a But when his guitar was stolen, everything changed. few dreadnoughts in the Martin style, but I didn’t make much money doing it.” “I had a really nice Martin D-28 and somebody took it,” Hoover says, without rancor and with more than a little glee, Hoover traveled around town by bicycle, which led to an realizing the thief had actually done him a favor. Hoover had encounter that would later have a huge impact on Hoover never given up his dream of becoming a luthier, and that and the Santa Cruz Guitar Company. “I was riding by an old long-ago misdeed led directly to his founding of the Santa Victorian house one day in 1974 and I noticed some Cruz Guitar Company, which now builds some of the mandolin parts hanging up in a window,” he recalls. “I was world’s finest steel-string guitars. really curious so I knocked on the door and it turned out that Darol Anger and David Morse were making f-5 style Richard Hoover is a compact, energetic man with a brown mandolins there, complete with ‘The Gibson’ inlay on the beard that is starting to show streaks of white. He laughs peghead. I rushed home and brought back a completed guitar easily, particularly when he ruminates about the absurdities and one that I was still working on, and they were impressed of the music industry, but when he talks about the guitars that enough with me that they invited me to join them in their he and his crew build, he is deadly serious. The area around mandolin building cooperative. We all had too much beatnik his desk is littered with curious bits of instrumental detritus, in us to actually pay ourselves, but we sold so few including the carcass of a Portuguese viola de arame, instruments, we eventually had to split up. I remember when samples of tonewoods, unfinished necks and half-shaped I left I had the choice of taking a mandolin or $200. Man, I bridges. As he sits, he fidgets with his pen, changing his grip spent that money fast.” on it as if he were grasping a chisel, then a small saw, then a By 1976 Richard Hoover had become a well-known figure in screwdriver. Santa Cruz’s growing music scene. That year two repairmen

“I began looking around for a replacement for my stolen guitar,” he continues, “and I fell in love with an Epiphone Texan at a local store called Union Grove Music, but I didn’t have the money for it so they sent me to Beneficial Finance down the street. When I explained to the loan officer what I wanted the money for, he mentioned that he built guitars as a hobby. Right then I told him that I would be by his house once a week and that he was going to teach me what he knew. I asked him what day of the week would be good for him, and I think he was amused by my audacity, so he said, ‘Sure.’ That was how I met Bruce McGuire, who became my mentor and helped get me started as a luthier.”

Bruce McGuire was an amateur classical guitar maker who learned his craft from Art Overholtzer, a guitar-making teacher at California State University, Chico, in the late 1960s. Hoover had already started making a guitar but his ©2008 SANTA CRUZ GUITAR COMPANY from Union Grove Music, Bruce Ross and William Davis, wild things with open tunings; and singer-songwriters like approached Hoover with an offer to invest in his small James Taylor, Stephen Stills and Joni Mitchell, who were business, and in exchange, he would teach them to build doing very sophisticated musical things on flattop guitars, guitars. Hoover was amenable to the idea. Since their stuff that had never been heard before. We saw there was a investment was quickly spent on wood, tools and rent, they need for a guitar that wasn’t just a big booming dreadnought, found an attorney who was a guitarist and was willing to do something that could record well and could be played the partnership’s legal work in exchange for their first guitar. fingerstyle as well as flatpicked.”

Bill had a great sense of design and he was instrumental in scrunched up in the left-hand corner of the fret pane: to coming up with the look of our early guitars. He later got a balance the look visually. I still think this is our best design. It job with George Lucas at Industrial Light and Magic, so he was a really good guitar for jazz and sophisticated fingerstyle was able to use his considerable talents in a new way.” playing, but it worked well for blues and some of the earthier music as well.” That same year, SCGC – as musicians began to call the company – introduced their second model, which they Unfortunately, the idea of a flattop guitar with a carved back dubbed the H. The idea for the guitar was brought to them by proved to be too difficult to market, so, as they did with the Paul Hostetter, a musician, artist and luthier who’d moved to H, the SCGC crew redesigned the guitar. They switched to a Santa Cruz from Chicago in the 1960s. Hostetter had always flat back, offered a plainer fretboard and made the cutaway an loved Gibson’s Nick Lucas Special, a model that Gibson option. They also changed the name from FTC, which stood made in various configurations from 1928 to 1941. Hostetter for Flat Top Cutaway, to the simpler F. The image of the FTC felt that the iteration from around 1930, which featured a lived on for much longer than the guitar did. For years it was slope-shouldered 00 silhouette, a nearly 41⁄2 body depth featured on the cover of the SCGC catalog and in their ads. In and a 13-fret neck, was the best-sounding -version. fact, the ad was so enticing that Eric Clapton called up after seeing it in a guitar magazine and ordered an FTC of his own. Hoover and Ross were intrigued by the idea, so working with input from Hostetter they built the first H, which took its From the start, the guitars of SCGC exhibited an almost name from the initial of the man who suggested it. On the maniacal attention to detail. “We wanted the guitars to look first H, the top, back and sides were made from highly good, now matter how closely you examined them,” Hoover figured koa, the neck joined the body at the 13th fret, and it says. “I had worked with a Swedish finish carpenter before I had a slotted headstock. The guitar was given the serial met Bruce and Bill and learned a number of cool techniques number H-1, which started the policy of giving each body that I was able to transfer to guitar making. I had also studied shape its own number sequence. a number of books on violin making, which gave me the idea of starting a different tradition of steel-string-guitar building. “The H had a rich tone, lots of volume and an overall sweet The American steel-string guitar was born in a factory and tone,” Hoover says. “We always felt that the 13-fret-neck companies like Martin, Washburn and Gibson were set up to configuration on that body shape put the bridge in exactly the produce guitars in high numbers. Many of the builders who right place on the top, and there’s no denying that those started around the same time we did tried to emulate that style guitars sound magical. But it was also a crashing failure in of building and, in the case of Taylor, Larivee and a few the marketplace. It was too small for the time – men just others, have become very good at it. wouldn’t buy smaller guitars, which were perceived as “girly” – and the 13-fret neck was too confusing for most “But I wanted to build steel-string guitars in the same kind of players.” small-workshop setting that Spanish guitars or violins were built in. That way, I felt we could maintain greater control Rather than abandon the H altogether, Hoover and Ross over the final product. I wanted a workshop where we could made some adjustments to the overall design. They built the take each particular piece of wood and voice it so it sounded guitar with a 12-fret neck, made the body a little shallower as good as possible. It took a while at first to work out the and switched to a solid peghead. (At the time, the only way system, but today I think we do an excellent job of building to acquire good tuning machines for a slotted-headstock guitars that sound the way we intend them to.” steel-string guitar was to rob a set from a vintage guitar. In those pre-Waverly days, SCGC sometimes waited for TR months until a suitable set of gears turned up.) A little later, As if losing a partner and launching two new models weren’t the H was also offered with a 14-fret neck. enough to keep Hoover and Ross on their toes in 1978, they also began a relationship with Tony Rice that would have a Ironically, the early 13-fret H has become something of a major impact on the company’s fortunes. “Darol Anger had collector’s item, and many players feel that it is the kept in touch after the mandolin project and he brought Tony best-sounding model SCGC ever made. In 2003 SCGC again to my house a couple of times to show him what we were teamed up with Paul Hostetter to make a limited run of 15 doing,” Hoover says. “Tony had been playing his 1935 D-28, custom 13-fret Hs. The series was so well-received that in the one that Clarence White had once owned, and he asked us 2004 the model was reintroduced under the designation h-13 to make a modern version of it. He didn’t want a replica, a and it is now part of the standard line. copy or a direct replacement, but rather an instrument that was a complement to his old Martin. That D-28 has a very F bassy, almost tubby tone. Tony wanted a -guitar with slightly In 1978 SCGC also introduced the FTC (numbered FTC-1), more treble and midrange that would work well in the studio which had a flat top and a carved, arched back. The new for the more modern stuff he was doing. Also, he wanted guitar had a body silhouette based on the Gibson J-185, something that could be easily replaced because his old guitar which was a small jumbo that was built between 1951 and was irreplaceable.” 1958. “We made the early ones with maple back and sides Rice let SCGC have the d-28 for a while so they could take and added a cutaway,” Hoover recalls. “The idea was to measurements and clean it up. The D-28 had seen some hard come up with a guitar that had the clarity and punch of an times and some dubious repair work. The most noticeable archtop and the warmth and sustain of a flattop. During the changes were the enlarged soundhole and the replaced, bound early stages of design, the cutaway was so asymmetrical that fretboard. Nobody is really sure why the soundhole was it looked weird to us. That’s why we came up with the enlarged, but the most likely theory is that the top had asymmetrical headstock and the deco inlays that were sort of become badly worn around the hole’s edges, and someone

just cut away the undamaged portions to give the hole a SCGC’s most visible model. Over the years the specs on the symmetrical appearance. The new fretboard is also guitar would change as Rice’s musical style evolved. something of mystery. The fretboard is narrow at 1 5⁄8 – the “Initially we were trying to do a tubby, booming old pre-war original nut width on the D-28 would have been 13⁄4 – and Martin,” Hoover says. “When we first met him, Tony was was not made by Martin. Some people who have examined playing fiddle tunes and bluegrass songs, but he was also the guitar believe Gretsch made the fretboard, and since it starting to play Coltrane, Django, Grisman’s ‘Dawg’ music had 21 frets instead of the 20 frets common on most acoustic and all kinds of other things. Our current Tony Rice Model guitars, it may have actually been made for an electric has evolved along with him, and now we have a guitar that is model. The new fretboard, which was probably installed in well-suited for contemporary bluegrass playing, that works the late 1950s, slightly shortened the D-28’s scale length well in the studio and on stage and sounds good on lead and from 25.4 to 25.25, which lessens the string tension and rhythm. In a way, the current Tony Rice Model is closer in gives the guitar a slightly “looser” feel. tone to the first guitar we built for him, the one he didn’t think he liked.” After measuring the d-28 inside and out, SCGC built what they believed was the perfect guitar for Tony Rice. “He Today, SCGC offers two versions of the Tony Rice Model. wanted a guitar that was all bass, at least compared to what The standard version has Indian rosewood sides and back, a we were making,” Hoover says. “Tony said he would take Sitka spruce top, mahogany neck and ebony fretboard. At care of the treble with his picking technique. We thought we 41⁄4 in diameter, the soundhole is slightly smaller than the knew better and made a guitar for him that was as balanced enlarged hole on Rice’s famous Martin d-28. The Tony Rice as what we usually did. It was also the first rosewood guitar Professional, however, more closely replicates the d-28’s we ever built, by the way. We were really pleased with it and features. The sides and back are Brazilian rosewood and the we took it up to Tony in Marin County. He had a cold at the soundhole is the same diameter of 49⁄16. The scale length is time so his ears were plugged up and he couldn’t hear it very also the slightly shorter 24.25, just like the d-28. This is the well, so we left it with him. model that Tony Rice currently plays.

“A few days later he called up and said the guitar just didn’t OM have what he was looking for. So we drove back up to pick it The success of the Tony Rice model alerted Hoover to the up and on the way back we stopped by Gryphon [Stringed fact that there was a market for instruments inspired by the Instruments in Palo Alto] and put it on consignment. I think Martin tradition, but that weren’t slavish copies of the older Richard Johnston sold it the same day. I’m pretty sure that guitars. In the early 1980s their Japanese distributor asked the guy who bought it never knew that he had the prototype SCGC to come up with a model that was based on Martin’s of what became the Tony Rice Model.” OM style from the late 1920s. Guitarist Eric Schoenberg had been championing the model since the 1960s, and by the late Hoover then set about making another guitar for Rice, but 1970s people finally started to wake up to its sonic possibility. this time he made sure the guitar had as much bass as In 1978, for example, luthier Nick Kukich released the possible. “We looked at what we had done to make our Ds Franklin OM, and in 1979 Martin opened their custom shop sound balanced and then we undid it all,” Hoover says. The and started making a few OMs on special order. SCGC team was curious to know what effect the larger soundhole would have on the guitar’s tone, so they contacted “The OM was the opposite of the 13-fret H,” Hoover says. “It Roger Siminoff, a respected luthier who had studied the had a wider body than the H, but it was shallower. It had a acoustics of fretted instruments for years. “He told us about complex sound that was very versatile. This was a guitar that the Hemholtz effect, which stated that the larger the aperture was perfectly suited to the new fingerstyle players we were on a resonating chamber, the higher the fundamental pitch hearing. It was also well-suited to singer-songwriters. Carol will be in that chamber. Or, in other words, the big soundhole McComb, Kathy Fink and Marcy Marxer all played our OMs accentuated the treble and midrange. So we built the guitar and probably sold more of those for us than Eric Clapton ever with the larger soundhole, and that was what we heard.” did FTCs. In a way, it was the guitar we should have made from the beginning, but it would have been a very hard sell in Rice loved his new guitar and promptly began recording with 1976.” it and playing it on stages across the country. (In a strange coincidence, the serial number on his first Santa Cruz guitar The introduction of the OM marked a turning point for was D-28.) As more players saw and heard the guitar, they SCGC. Until then Hoover and Ross had been making about began to call up SCGC to order ones just like it. “When we 36 guitars a year, of which 85 percent were Ds. “After the started our company, we had an intense desire not to copy OM came out, our sales just started climbing,” Hoover says. Martin, to make our own mark,” Hoover recalls. “So when “Until then, it was still sort of weird to buy a guitar that the calls came in asking us to make a guitar like Tony’s, we wasn’t built by Martin, Gibson or Guild. But something declined the orders by telling people that it was a custom, seemed to change around then, and it got to the point that the one-off guitar and that we didn’t plan to make any more. But two of us couldn’t handle the orders that were coming in. We after fielding thirty or forty calls for that guitar, we finally were offering a good range of models and we were willing realized we had something that may have looked like an old and able to tackle all kinds of custom work. From the herringbone dreadnought, but it was something Martin beginning, about half of the guitars we built were custom, and wasn’t doing, and that’s why people were asking for it.” as we increased our output, that ratio stayed the same.”

Fear. “Janis Ian had this great little guitar that Lloyd Baggs not 19 anymore. The shorter scales are just more comfortable made for her, back before he started making pickups.” to play. We find the guys that have played Ds with long scales Hoover says. “Janis is a hellacious guitarist, but she’s very all their lives are getting stiffer hands and dodgy backs and petite and wanted a guitar that fit her. It also needed we’re finding them moving to 000s with short scales out of state-of-the-art electronics so she could get her sound self-defense. I think we’re going to see more of that in the onstage. And it had to be black, with a black nut and saddle. future.” We even tried to get black frets, but that didn’t work out. It was supposed to be a one-off, but as she played it on stage A New Generation we started getting orders for it. She strings it up with .010s In 2006, the Santa Cruz Guitar Company will celebrate its and it has very low action, a very short scale length, and a 30th anniversary. For Richard Hoover, it will be 40 years shallow body to help reduce feedback. Because the strings since he first dissected (and rebuilt) his Harmony guitar. In are so light, we can brace it extremely lightly and still have a that time Hoover has gone from a struggling journeyman to good sound acoustically.” the leader of a crew of a dozen skilled builders who produce almost 1000 guitars a year. He has designed and built guitars “The Sonia H is built for Sonia of Disappear Fear,” Hoover that are played by some of the finest musicians in the world. explains. “Her first SCGC was an H with the original D He has raised the art of steel-string lutherie to new levels and peghead, 14-frets and electronics. She has an intense he has trained some of the most accomplished contemporary following worldwide and when she approached us about luthiers in his workshop. Of all these accomplishments, doing a signature model, we thought it sounded like a good however, he is proudest of the last. idea. Oddly enough, most of them are sold through her fan club and not as many through stores.” “I think my ultimate legacy will be the builders who came through my shop, learned to build guitars under my direction, PW & VS and have gone on to carry on the tradition,” he says. “Our Almost from the day the Santa Cruz Guitar Company was first employee was Michael Hornick, who took the job founded, players have perceived them as expensive guitars. expressly to learn how to build guitars and then went on to Part of the problem was that their most visible and build Shanti guitars. Jeff Traugott did the same thing. He well-known models, such as the Tony Rice or cutaway F with came to us and said that he’d give us 110 percent for five deco fretboard inlays, areexpensive, but many of their other years, and then he’d go out on his own. Bill Hardin is models are about the same price as guitars with similar building guitars in Hawaii under the Bear Creek name, and features from competitors like Martin and Collings. In the late Roy McAllister is now up in Washington.” 1990s Richard Hoover decided to offer the PW or Pre-war series. “We came up with a guitar that was much plainer than Richard Hoover sometimes envies the luthiers who have left our other guitars, with simpler trim and so forth,” he says. the nest and are working alone, building guitars one at a time “By stripping off the cosmetic appointments, we don’t affect like he used to do more than three decades ago. “Then I the tone, just the time it takes to build them. This lets us sell remember my initial motivation for working with other them at a lower price point. We offer them in rosewood and people was that I got cabin fever working on my own,” he mahogany in both the D and OM size. At first we were only says. “And I also recall that by working as a team with guys going to offer them for a limited time, but they were so like Jeff, Michael, Roy and Bill, we all learned more together well-received that we added them to the standard line.” than we ever could have on our own.”

Another recent addition to the catalog has been a series of Hoover is very proud of his current staff and admires how slope-shouldered Ds based on the classic Gibson guitars of dedicated they are to the craft of building guitars. “Veteran the 1930s and 1940s. “I’ve always had a soft spot in my builders like Adam Rose and Dan Roberts and the rest of the heart for sunburst Gibsons,” Hoover says. “They had such a guys are making guitars that are as good as or better than wonderful look that is just so cowboy. Remember, I started anything SCGC has ever done. I think this might be the best out as Otis B. Rodeo, so it was probably inevitable that I SCGC team yet,” he says. “I know that some of my current would build something like this. We’re building a Vintage crew will leave and start building their own guitars based on Jumbo, which has our standard 25.375-inch scale length and their own ideas, which is a sign that I’ve been doing my job.” tapered braces. The Vintage Southerner is essentially the Still, he hopes they don’t leave too soon. After all, there are same thing, but with a shorter 24.750-inch scale length that still a lot of Santa Cruz guitars that need to be built. makes it a bit easier to play. This guitar is a bit of a conundrum to me because everything I’ve learned over the years about acoustic physics says that a guitar with its bridge placement so close to the soundhole shouldn’t sound as good as it does. But it has a full tone and really shines on blues and earthier styles like that. Another thing that’s interesting about the Vintage Southerner is that it’s one of our first big guitars with a shorter scale. We’re getting more and more requests for shorter scales. Part of it is the sound, which is a little mellower than a long scale guitar.

“But there is another thing I’ve noticed,” Hoover adds. “I’ve always made guitars for people my age. When I was 19 most of my customers were around that age and now that I’m in my 50s, many of my customers are in their 50s. Well, we’re In 1966 a young Richard Hoover got the notion that he could effort had stalled, so McGuire helped him complete it and somehow improve the tone of his old Harmony guitar by then coached him in the fundamentals of guitar making. fiddling around with its insides. So he took it apart and, more McGuire also introduced Hoover to another amateur builder importantly, managed to get it back together. His first attempt named Jim Patterson, who made steel-string guitars in the at guitar surgery didn’t make his Harmony sound better, but Martin tradition. it did instill in him the desire to build guitars of his own. “Both Bruce and Jim were extremely helpful when I was Over the next few years he searched in vain for information starting out,” Hoover says. “Bruce introduced me to the basic about his new passion, but there were no books in print on techniques of guitar building, and Jim showed me how to refine the subject at the time. He made do with lessons in general what I was doing and helped me learn to do things like make woodworking from his father, who was a skilled dovetail neck joints. I owe both men a lot and I’m extremely cabinetmaker. Hoover learned many useful techniques and grateful they took the time to show me what they did.” gained experience with a variety of tools, but his growing skills didn’t bring him any closer to his goal. Instead, he After Hoover had built a few guitars, he set up shop as a decided to channel his energy into becoming a better guitar repairman and luthier. “I used the name Otis B. Rodeo on my player. When he moved to Santa Cruz in 1972, it was with guitars and had a cowboy on a bucking bronco as a logo,” he the intention of becoming a guitar player, not a guitar maker. says. “That was my stage name when I performed. I built a But when his guitar was stolen, everything changed. few dreadnoughts in the Martin style, but I didn’t make much money doing it.” “I had a really nice Martin D-28 and somebody took it,” Hoover says, without rancor and with more than a little glee, Hoover traveled around town by bicycle, which led to an realizing the thief had actually done him a favor. Hoover had encounter that would later have a huge impact on Hoover never given up his dream of becoming a luthier, and that and the Santa Cruz Guitar Company. “I was riding by an old long-ago misdeed led directly to his founding of the Santa Victorian house one day in 1974 and I noticed some Cruz Guitar Company, which now builds some of the mandolin parts hanging up in a window,” he recalls. “I was world’s finest steel-string guitars. really curious so I knocked on the door and it turned out that Darol Anger and David Morse were making f-5 style Richard Hoover is a compact, energetic man with a brown mandolins there, complete with ‘The Gibson’ inlay on the beard that is starting to show streaks of white. He laughs peghead. I rushed home and brought back a completed guitar easily, particularly when he ruminates about the absurdities and one that I was still working on, and they were impressed of the music industry, but when he talks about the guitars that enough with me that they invited me to join them in their he and his crew build, he is deadly serious. The area around mandolin building cooperative. We all had too much beatnik his desk is littered with curious bits of instrumental detritus, in us to actually pay ourselves, but we sold so few including the carcass of a Portuguese viola de arame, instruments, we eventually had to split up. I remember when samples of tonewoods, unfinished necks and half-shaped I left I had the choice of taking a mandolin or $200. Man, I bridges. As he sits, he fidgets with his pen, changing his grip spent that money fast.” on it as if he were grasping a chisel, then a small saw, then a By 1976 Richard Hoover had become a well-known figure in screwdriver. Santa Cruz’s growing music scene. That year two repairmen

from Union Grove Music, Bruce Ross and William Davis, wild things with open tunings; and singer-songwriters like approached Hoover with an offer to invest in his small James Taylor, Stephen Stills and Joni Mitchell, who were business, and in exchange, he would teach them to build doing very sophisticated musical things on flattop guitars, guitars. Hoover was amenable to the idea. Since their stuff that had never been heard before. We saw there was a investment was quickly spent on wood, tools and rent, they need for a guitar that wasn’t just a big booming dreadnought, found an attorney who was a guitarist and was willing to do something that could record well and could be played the partnership’s legal work in exchange for their first guitar. fingerstyle as well as flatpicked.”

“One of the first things we had to do with the lawyer was to And so the D was born. “The D model was going to be the come up with a name for the company,” Hoover says. “Since one guitar for everybody,” Hoover says. “Luckily for the there were three of us, it didn’t seem right to use just one of growth of the company, I later learned that making only one our names. It was the early ’70s, a time when we are all model wasn’t such a good idea. Anyway, the concept was that supposed to be letting go of our egos, so it seemed like the our D would be voiced to have a more balanced tone, with thing to do. We thought about all kinds of names – I equally good bass and treble response. Our D also had a remember Soquel Guitars, Chinquapin Guitars and Banty flatter radius to the fretboard, a 113⁄16-inch width nut, and a Guitars were all contenders – but we couldn’t agree on wide, 1⁄8-inch saddle for good intonation. The D wasn’t anything. Our lawyer said we needed to put something on the braced like a new Martin, which at the time had straight partnership document and wrote in ‘Santa Cruz Guitar braces, or an old Martin, which would have had scalloped Company’ with the understanding we would change it when braces. The braces on our D tapered from the center of the X we thought of something better. Well, we obviously didn’t.” out towards the sides, which gave us the balanced bass-to-treble response we were after.” D Now that the young luthiers had a company, they needed a Another unique feature of the D was the use of koa for the guitar to sell, but coming up with their first model was sides and back. Today, practically every luthier of note uses difficult. They knew they didn’t want to do a straight Martin koa, but back then it was a very unusual choice. Koa had been or Gibson copy, but the music scene in 1976 didn’t offer used fairly regularly in the early part of the 20th century, many clues as to what would sell. One problem was that the particularly for ukuleles and Hawaiian steel guitars built by pop mainstream was going through one of its periodic bouts makers like Martin, Knutsen and Weissenborn. But when the of aimlessness. A couple of years earlier, singer-songwriters Great Depression hit in the 1930s, the interest in all things routinely made the charts, and it was possible for musicians Hawaiian faded and the fine sound of koa wood was like James Taylor, Harry Chapin, Don McLean, Melanie, forgotten. John Denver and Jim Croce to score Top 10 hits armed with little more than an acoustic guitar. Hoover, Ross and Davis were searching for a tonewood that had a unique character both sonically and visually, and koa fit In 1976, however, mainstream pop seemed to consist almost the bill admirably. Koa also seemed to solve a marketing entirely of novelty songs like C. W. McCall’s “Convoy” and problem that was bedeviling the fledgling company. “I prefer Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck (Part 1),” disco hits like “Love the tone of mahogany to rosewood,” Hoover explains. Rollercoaster” and “(Shake Shake Shake) Shake Your “Rosewood has a warm, round tone, but it doesn’t have the Booty” and weaker efforts by formerly reliable stars like articulate sound, the snap and clarity of mahogany. I wanted Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” and Rod Stewart’s to build mahogany guitars, but the problem was that, at the “Tonight’s the Night.” There were rumblings in the acoustic time, mahogany was positioned in the market as the underground, though. Small labels like Kicking Mule and blue-collar sister of rosewood, the cheaper alternative to Takoma were releasing a steady stream of recordings from rosewood. artists like Leo Kottke, John Fahey, Dale Miller, Duck Baker, Robbie Basho and Peter Lang. These records sold very few “We were out to change the world with our guitars and we copies, but it seemed like every copy sold triggered a new may have been naïve about a lot of things, but we were smart player to take up the acoustic guitar. enough to figure out that the world wasn’t ready for a premium mahogany guitar. Bruce and Bill had played a That same year, David Grisman formed the first version of couple of 1920s Martin 00s that were made of koa and we his influential quintet with Hoover’s former mandolin thought that it would be a good alternative. It had a similar building partner, Darol Anger, and flatpicking guitar genius tone to mahogany and it looked so nice. In retrospect, the Tony Rice. William Ackerman also released his first LP, In choice of koa may have slowed our progress in the market, Search of the Turtle’s Navel, an event that was barely noticed because it was just one more new thing that we were offering, at the time. A few years later, though, Ackerman took his and perhaps it was one thing too many. We were just about brand of gentle acoustic-guitar music to the masses by the first company to start using koa in the 1970s, but, as we launching his Windham Hill record label and, with it, the discovered back then, first isn’t always the best place to be.” New Age music movement, which was a significant event in acoustic-guitar history. H The year 1978 was an important one for the Santa Cruz All of this stirring underground caught the attention of the Guitar Company. After two years of building guitars, William luthiers in Santa Cruz. “We had noticed that there was a Davis discovered that he couldn’t live on the meager amount change in the way people played acoustic guitar,” Hoover of money that was trickling in. “Youth, good health, a very recalls. “There were flatpickers like Clarence White, Tony supportive sweetheart and the ability to live on nothing Rice and Dan Crary, who were mixing jazz and other styles helped me to survive in those days,” Hoover recalls. “Bill felt with fiddle tunes; fingerpickers like Kottke and Fahey doing he needed more money, so Bruce and I bought out his share. ©2008 SANTA CRUZ GUITAR COMPANY Bill had a great sense of design and he was instrumental in scrunched up in the left-hand corner of the fret pane: to coming up with the look of our early guitars. He later got a balance the look visually. I still think this is our best design. It job with George Lucas at Industrial Light and Magic, so he was a really good guitar for jazz and sophisticated fingerstyle was able to use his considerable talents in a new way.” playing, but it worked well for blues and some of the earthier music as well.” That same year, SCGC – as musicians began to call the company – introduced their second model, which they Unfortunately, the idea of a flattop guitar with a carved back dubbed the H. The idea for the guitar was brought to them by proved to be too difficult to market, so, as they did with the Paul Hostetter, a musician, artist and luthier who’d moved to H, the SCGC crew redesigned the guitar. They switched to a Santa Cruz from Chicago in the 1960s. Hostetter had always flat back, offered a plainer fretboard and made the cutaway an loved Gibson’s Nick Lucas Special, a model that Gibson option. They also changed the name from FTC, which stood made in various configurations from 1928 to 1941. Hostetter for Flat Top Cutaway, to the simpler F. The image of the FTC felt that the iteration from around 1930, which featured a lived on for much longer than the guitar did. For years it was slope-shouldered 00 silhouette, a nearly 41⁄2 body depth featured on the cover of the SCGC catalog and in their ads. In and a 13-fret neck, was the best-sounding -version. fact, the ad was so enticing that Eric Clapton called up after seeing it in a guitar magazine and ordered an FTC of his own. Hoover and Ross were intrigued by the idea, so working with input from Hostetter they built the first H, which took its From the start, the guitars of SCGC exhibited an almost name from the initial of the man who suggested it. On the maniacal attention to detail. “We wanted the guitars to look first H, the top, back and sides were made from highly good, now matter how closely you examined them,” Hoover figured koa, the neck joined the body at the 13th fret, and it says. “I had worked with a Swedish finish carpenter before I had a slotted headstock. The guitar was given the serial met Bruce and Bill and learned a number of cool techniques number H-1, which started the policy of giving each body that I was able to transfer to guitar making. I had also studied shape its own number sequence. a number of books on violin making, which gave me the idea of starting a different tradition of steel-string-guitar building. “The H had a rich tone, lots of volume and an overall sweet The American steel-string guitar was born in a factory and tone,” Hoover says. “We always felt that the 13-fret-neck companies like Martin, Washburn and Gibson were set up to configuration on that body shape put the bridge in exactly the produce guitars in high numbers. Many of the builders who right place on the top, and there’s no denying that those started around the same time we did tried to emulate that style guitars sound magical. But it was also a crashing failure in of building and, in the case of Taylor, Larivee and a few the marketplace. It was too small for the time – men just others, have become very good at it. wouldn’t buy smaller guitars, which were perceived as “girly” – and the 13-fret neck was too confusing for most “But I wanted to build steel-string guitars in the same kind of players.” small-workshop setting that Spanish guitars or violins were built in. That way, I felt we could maintain greater control Rather than abandon the H altogether, Hoover and Ross over the final product. I wanted a workshop where we could made some adjustments to the overall design. They built the take each particular piece of wood and voice it so it sounded guitar with a 12-fret neck, made the body a little shallower as good as possible. It took a while at first to work out the and switched to a solid peghead. (At the time, the only way system, but today I think we do an excellent job of building to acquire good tuning machines for a slotted-headstock guitars that sound the way we intend them to.” steel-string guitar was to rob a set from a vintage guitar. In those pre-Waverly days, SCGC sometimes waited for TR months until a suitable set of gears turned up.) A little later, As if losing a partner and launching two new models weren’t the H was also offered with a 14-fret neck. enough to keep Hoover and Ross on their toes in 1978, they also began a relationship with Tony Rice that would have a Ironically, the early 13-fret H has become something of a major impact on the company’s fortunes. “Darol Anger had collector’s item, and many players feel that it is the kept in touch after the mandolin project and he brought Tony best-sounding model SCGC ever made. In 2003 SCGC again to my house a couple of times to show him what we were teamed up with Paul Hostetter to make a limited run of 15 doing,” Hoover says. “Tony had been playing his 1935 D-28, custom 13-fret Hs. The series was so well-received that in the one that Clarence White had once owned, and he asked us 2004 the model was reintroduced under the designation h-13 to make a modern version of it. He didn’t want a replica, a and it is now part of the standard line. copy or a direct replacement, but rather an instrument that was a complement to his old Martin. That D-28 has a very F bassy, almost tubby tone. Tony wanted a -guitar with slightly In 1978 SCGC also introduced the FTC (numbered FTC-1), more treble and midrange that would work well in the studio which had a flat top and a carved, arched back. The new for the more modern stuff he was doing. Also, he wanted guitar had a body silhouette based on the Gibson J-185, something that could be easily replaced because his old guitar which was a small jumbo that was built between 1951 and was irreplaceable.” 1958. “We made the early ones with maple back and sides Rice let SCGC have the d-28 for a while so they could take and added a cutaway,” Hoover recalls. “The idea was to measurements and clean it up. The D-28 had seen some hard come up with a guitar that had the clarity and punch of an times and some dubious repair work. The most noticeable archtop and the warmth and sustain of a flattop. During the changes were the enlarged soundhole and the replaced, bound early stages of design, the cutaway was so asymmetrical that fretboard. Nobody is really sure why the soundhole was it looked weird to us. That’s why we came up with the enlarged, but the most likely theory is that the top had asymmetrical headstock and the deco inlays that were sort of become badly worn around the hole’s edges, and someone

In 1981, SCGC finally bowed to public pressure and started FS offering the Tony Rice Model as part of the standard line. It By 1987, Hoover and Ross hired two new employees to help proved to be an immediate success and quickly became them catch up with the backlog of orders. The first to sign on ©2008 SANTA CRUZ GUITAR COMPANY was a sheet-metal worker named Michael Hornick, followed D, F and H to 111⁄16-inch and switched the headstocks on the a few months later by Jeff Traugott. Both men were clear that D and H to the squared-off style.” they wanted to work at SCGC so they could learn to build guitars and eventually move out on their own. “I Once the older models were overhauled, Hoover began remembered how Bruce McGuire and Jim Patterson had looking for ways to expand the line. One trend that caught helped me get started,” Hoover says. “I thought I should everyone by surprise in the early 1990s was the revival of continue that tradition, so I hired Michael and Jeff.” interest in 12-fret guitars. Prior to the introduction of the 14-fret Martin OM in 1929, most flattop guitars were built “When I started building in the early 1970s, there was almost with 12-fret necks. While the new 14-fret guitars never no information on steel-string guitar making. But there were completely replaced the older style, practically every serious lots of builders across the country in a similar situation, and player went for the longer neck and its easy access to higher we started to network and share information. Bob Taylor frets. In the early 1960s there was a brief vogue for the down in San Diego, Jean Larrivee in Canada, Michael archaic looking 12-fret guitars among the folk revivalists, but Gurian in New York – all were generous with their by 1970 they were back in closets and under beds. knowledge, and I think that’s why we all progressed so rapidly. When one of us found a new tool or technique we let In the late 1980s guitarists began to realize that 12-fret guitars everyone else know, which helped elevate the level of work were particularly well-suited to fingerpicking. They usually from all the builders and helped give all of us more had wider fretboards, which made the left-hand fingering on credibility in the marketplace.” complex passages easier. The bodies were longer than their 14-fret counterparts, which produced more volume, and the Hornick and Traugott quickly proved their worth when they bridge was closer to the center of the top, which increased the helped design a new model called the FS. It was introduced bass response and overall clarity of tone. As the prices of in late 1987 and was a variation of the F, designed vintage 12-frets from Martin and other builders began to specifically for playing fingerstyle. The new model featured climb, modern builders stepped in to fill the demand. a lightly braced cedar top, Indian rosewood sides and back and a very austere appearance, which set it apart from just “When people first started asking us to make 12-fret guitars about every other acoustic guitar on the market at the time. in the early 1990s, I just had to laugh,” Hoover says. “I felt like asking them, ‘Where were you in 1978 when we were “The Tony Rice sort of happened to us, as it were, but the FS making the first version of the H?’ Starting in the mid-1990s was our first attempt to come up with a guitar designed for a we started making a 12-fret 000 and, a little later, a 12-fret 00. specific style from the ground up,” Hoover says. “The FS We also started making 12-fret Ds, which were just cannons. I was also the first guitar we designed collectively. We all got was very proud to have Norman Blake play one of our 12-fret together and talked about the modern fingerstyle playing that Ds on the second record he made with Tony Rice. He’s such a was going on at the time and we brainstormed on what we stickler for vintage tone; having him play our guitar was a thought the market would want. We thought the F body sign we got it right.” shape was a perfect place to start, and since New Age guitar was so popular, we tried to minimize the amount of metal Along with bringing out new body sizes, SCGC began to and plastic on the instrument to give it a more organic feel.” offer variations on their standard models. One that was particularly dear to Hoover’s heart was the Vintage Artist. “I The FS had rosewood binding with cobalt blue purfiing, no always loved the sound of mahogany guitars,” he says, “but fretboard inlays, a cutaway and a pointed headstock inspired by the mid 1990s the cost of mahogany had gone up quite a by the innovative guitars of Steve Klein. “We found that the bit and the prices of old d-18s were really starting to soar. I pointed headstock kept the strings in a straighter line than thought this would be a perfect time to try and build a our other headstock shapes,” Hoover says. “This style helped premium mahogany guitar. So we came up with the Vintage keep the strings from binding in the nut when going into the Artist, a pre-war–style mahogany D, but in a dressier altered tunings that so many players were experimenting package. I hoped to entice more folks into trying mahogany, with.” The FS was a modest but steady seller, but its spartan and it sold well, but not as well as I hoped. We still make it, appointments and elegant shape had a major influence on but it’s not always in our price list.” many luthiers. These days so many builders are offering small jumbos with wood binding and a cutaway that it’s Another interesting variation was the Bob Brozman Baritone becoming cliché. As Hoover says about their early use of Guitar, which was based on the 12-fret D body. “Bob koa, “first isn’t always the best place to be.” Brozman had played a baritone guitar that Martin Simpson owned and decided he wanted one of his own,” Hoover says. 000 “Bob wanted to use a 27 scale and to have the top braced to In 1989, Richard Hoover bought out his partner Bruce Ross, be tuned down to C and played with really heavy strings. That who was ready to move on to other things. Now that he was guitar has an enormous, piano-like tone. It’s designed to be free to run SCGC on his own, Hoover decided to revamp the strung up with a .066 sixth string, but we’ve found that we line and to update some of the features to meet the needs of can’t send them to stores strung like that, because players contemporary players. “By 1990 we had four different want to tune them up to E. With these massive strings on it, headstock shapes,” Hoover says. “We had the original SCGC they can do real top damage almost instantly. We’re still headstock, which we used on the Ds and Hs; the square trying to figure out that marketing problem.” headstock, which came on the Tony Rice and the OM; the pointed FS headstock; and the asymmetrical F headstock. We Two other signature models that Hoover is proud of were also had a variety of standard neck widths, and all of it was designed for Janis Ian and Sonia, who plays with Disappear getting confusing. So we standardized the nut width on the

was a sheet-metal worker named Michael Hornick, followed D, F and H to 111⁄16-inch and switched the headstocks on the a few months later by Jeff Traugott. Both men were clear that D and H to the squared-off style.” they wanted to work at SCGC so they could learn to build guitars and eventually move out on their own. “I Once the older models were overhauled, Hoover began remembered how Bruce McGuire and Jim Patterson had looking for ways to expand the line. One trend that caught helped me get started,” Hoover says. “I thought I should everyone by surprise in the early 1990s was the revival of continue that tradition, so I hired Michael and Jeff.” interest in 12-fret guitars. Prior to the introduction of the 14-fret Martin OM in 1929, most flattop guitars were built “When I started building in the early 1970s, there was almost with 12-fret necks. While the new 14-fret guitars never no information on steel-string guitar making. But there were completely replaced the older style, practically every serious lots of builders across the country in a similar situation, and player went for the longer neck and its easy access to higher we started to network and share information. Bob Taylor frets. In the early 1960s there was a brief vogue for the down in San Diego, Jean Larrivee in Canada, Michael archaic looking 12-fret guitars among the folk revivalists, but Gurian in New York – all were generous with their by 1970 they were back in closets and under beds. knowledge, and I think that’s why we all progressed so rapidly. When one of us found a new tool or technique we let In the late 1980s guitarists began to realize that 12-fret guitars everyone else know, which helped elevate the level of work were particularly well-suited to fingerpicking. They usually from all the builders and helped give all of us more had wider fretboards, which made the left-hand fingering on credibility in the marketplace.” complex passages easier. The bodies were longer than their 14-fret counterparts, which produced more volume, and the Hornick and Traugott quickly proved their worth when they bridge was closer to the center of the top, which increased the helped design a new model called the FS. It was introduced bass response and overall clarity of tone. As the prices of in late 1987 and was a variation of the F, designed vintage 12-frets from Martin and other builders began to specifically for playing fingerstyle. The new model featured climb, modern builders stepped in to fill the demand. a lightly braced cedar top, Indian rosewood sides and back and a very austere appearance, which set it apart from just “When people first started asking us to make 12-fret guitars about every other acoustic guitar on the market at the time. in the early 1990s, I just had to laugh,” Hoover says. “I felt like asking them, ‘Where were you in 1978 when we were “The Tony Rice sort of happened to us, as it were, but the FS making the first version of the H?’ Starting in the mid-1990s was our first attempt to come up with a guitar designed for a we started making a 12-fret 000 and, a little later, a 12-fret 00. specific style from the ground up,” Hoover says. “The FS We also started making 12-fret Ds, which were just cannons. I was also the first guitar we designed collectively. We all got was very proud to have Norman Blake play one of our 12-fret together and talked about the modern fingerstyle playing that Ds on the second record he made with Tony Rice. He’s such a was going on at the time and we brainstormed on what we stickler for vintage tone; having him play our guitar was a thought the market would want. We thought the F body sign we got it right.” shape was a perfect place to start, and since New Age guitar was so popular, we tried to minimize the amount of metal Along with bringing out new body sizes, SCGC began to and plastic on the instrument to give it a more organic feel.” offer variations on their standard models. One that was particularly dear to Hoover’s heart was the Vintage Artist. “I The FS had rosewood binding with cobalt blue purfiing, no always loved the sound of mahogany guitars,” he says, “but fretboard inlays, a cutaway and a pointed headstock inspired by the mid 1990s the cost of mahogany had gone up quite a by the innovative guitars of Steve Klein. “We found that the bit and the prices of old d-18s were really starting to soar. I pointed headstock kept the strings in a straighter line than thought this would be a perfect time to try and build a our other headstock shapes,” Hoover says. “This style helped premium mahogany guitar. So we came up with the Vintage keep the strings from binding in the nut when going into the Artist, a pre-war–style mahogany D, but in a dressier altered tunings that so many players were experimenting package. I hoped to entice more folks into trying mahogany, with.” The FS was a modest but steady seller, but its spartan and it sold well, but not as well as I hoped. We still make it, appointments and elegant shape had a major influence on but it’s not always in our price list.” many luthiers. These days so many builders are offering small jumbos with wood binding and a cutaway that it’s Another interesting variation was the Bob Brozman Baritone becoming cliché. As Hoover says about their early use of Guitar, which was based on the 12-fret D body. “Bob koa, “first isn’t always the best place to be.” Brozman had played a baritone guitar that Martin Simpson owned and decided he wanted one of his own,” Hoover says. 000 “Bob wanted to use a 27 scale and to have the top braced to In 1989, Richard Hoover bought out his partner Bruce Ross, be tuned down to C and played with really heavy strings. That who was ready to move on to other things. Now that he was guitar has an enormous, piano-like tone. It’s designed to be free to run SCGC on his own, Hoover decided to revamp the strung up with a .066 sixth string, but we’ve found that we line and to update some of the features to meet the needs of can’t send them to stores strung like that, because players contemporary players. “By 1990 we had four different want to tune them up to E. With these massive strings on it, headstock shapes,” Hoover says. “We had the original SCGC they can do real top damage almost instantly. We’re still headstock, which we used on the Ds and Hs; the square trying to figure out that marketing problem.” headstock, which came on the Tony Rice and the OM; the pointed FS headstock; and the asymmetrical F headstock. We Two other signature models that Hoover is proud of were also had a variety of standard neck widths, and all of it was designed for Janis Ian and Sonia, who plays with Disappear getting confusing. So we standardized the nut width on the ©2008 SANTA CRUZ GUITAR COMPANY Fear. “Janis Ian had this great little guitar that Lloyd Baggs not 19 anymore. The shorter scales are just more comfortable made for her, back before he started making pickups.” to play. We find the guys that have played Ds with long scales Hoover says. “Janis is a hellacious guitarist, but she’s very all their lives are getting stiffer hands and dodgy backs and petite and wanted a guitar that fit her. It also needed we’re finding them moving to 000s with short scales out of state-of-the-art electronics so she could get her sound self-defense. I think we’re going to see more of that in the onstage. And it had to be black, with a black nut and saddle. future.” We even tried to get black frets, but that didn’t work out. It was supposed to be a one-off, but as she played it on stage A New Generation we started getting orders for it. She strings it up with .010s In 2006, the Santa Cruz Guitar Company will celebrate its and it has very low action, a very short scale length, and a 30th anniversary. For Richard Hoover, it will be 40 years shallow body to help reduce feedback. Because the strings since he first dissected (and rebuilt) his Harmony guitar. In are so light, we can brace it extremely lightly and still have a that time Hoover has gone from a struggling journeyman to good sound acoustically.” the leader of a crew of a dozen skilled builders who produce almost 1000 guitars a year. He has designed and built guitars “The Sonia H is built for Sonia of Disappear Fear,” Hoover that are played by some of the finest musicians in the world. explains. “Her first SCGC was an H with the original D He has raised the art of steel-string lutherie to new levels and peghead, 14-frets and electronics. She has an intense he has trained some of the most accomplished contemporary following worldwide and when she approached us about luthiers in his workshop. Of all these accomplishments, doing a signature model, we thought it sounded like a good however, he is proudest of the last. idea. Oddly enough, most of them are sold through her fan club and not as many through stores.” “I think my ultimate legacy will be the builders who came through my shop, learned to build guitars under my direction, PW & VS and have gone on to carry on the tradition,” he says. “Our Almost from the day the Santa Cruz Guitar Company was first employee was Michael Hornick, who took the job founded, players have perceived them as expensive guitars. expressly to learn how to build guitars and then went on to Part of the problem was that their most visible and build Shanti guitars. Jeff Traugott did the same thing. He well-known models, such as the Tony Rice or cutaway F with came to us and said that he’d give us 110 percent for five deco fretboard inlays, areexpensive, but many of their other years, and then he’d go out on his own. Bill Hardin is models are about the same price as guitars with similar building guitars in Hawaii under the Bear Creek name, and features from competitors like Martin and Collings. In the late Roy McAllister is now up in Washington.” 1990s Richard Hoover decided to offer the PW or Pre-war series. “We came up with a guitar that was much plainer than Richard Hoover sometimes envies the luthiers who have left our other guitars, with simpler trim and so forth,” he says. the nest and are working alone, building guitars one at a time “By stripping off the cosmetic appointments, we don’t affect like he used to do more than three decades ago. “Then I the tone, just the time it takes to build them. This lets us sell remember my initial motivation for working with other them at a lower price point. We offer them in rosewood and people was that I got cabin fever working on my own,” he mahogany in both the D and OM size. At first we were only says. “And I also recall that by working as a team with guys going to offer them for a limited time, but they were so like Jeff, Michael, Roy and Bill, we all learned more together well-received that we added them to the standard line.” than we ever could have on our own.”

“But there is another thing I’ve noticed,” Hoover adds. “I’ve always made guitars for people my age. When I was 19 most of my customers were around that age and now that I’m in Handmade, Handed Down. my 50s, many of my customers are in their 50s. Well, we’re santacruzguitar.com - 831.425.0999