Santa Cruz Guitar Company Founder Richard Hoover Reflects on Five Decades of Lutherie—and the Road Ahead

In the mid-1970s, the idea of a small shop building high-end guitars for individual players was almost unheard of. When Richard Hoover opened Santa Cruz Guitar Company, the market was dominated by factory-built dreadnoughts, and the handful of independent luthiers scattered across the country worked largely in isolation. Materials knowledge was hard-won, and design conventions were rarely challenged.

Over the next five decades, Hoover helped redefine what a boutique guitar company could be, earning a reputation for instruments that combine meticulous craftsmanship with a deep understanding of the player’s needs. Today, his shop produces only a few hundred guitars a year, each built start to finish largely by hand and often conceived for a specific musician rather than a market category.

That approach has drawn players as different as jazz guitarist Eric Skye, fingerstylist Jamie Stillway, and the late bluegrass legend Tony Rice—each finding in a Santa Cruz guitar a voice that answers to their own touch. It has also made the company a model for how a small shop can thrive on its own terms, with the builder-player connection as central as the guitar itself.

The materials are chosen with the same care. Hoover has long worked with salvaged and responsibly sourced woods, many from Northern California: old-growth redwood recovered from the San Lorenzo River, beams from century-old churches, timbers from bridges. These tonewoods have already stood for generations—sometimes centuries—carrying a story and a character many players and builders prize.

As Santa Cruz Guitar Company’s 50th anniversary approaches, Hoover is still refining his craft, blending traditional lutherie with selective use of new technology and pushing the guitar in both subtle and profound ways. I spoke with him recently about the early days, the changes he’s witnessed, and what it means to keep working at this level after half a century.

When you think back to 1976, in that small Santa Cruz workshop, what stands out most about the guitar world you were stepping into?

What stands out most is how little I knew—and how small the circle was. There were a few publications, like Mugwumps, or material from the Denver Folklore Center, but no internet, no quick communication. If you wanted to ask another builder a question, you sent a letter and waited days for a reply.

In 1980, the Guild of American Luthiers held a convention in San Francisco. That was a watershed moment for me: we showed up, met other makers, and realized there was a much bigger world out there. Before that, we were operating in isolation.

From the beginning, we didn’t want to be the next Martin. We wanted to be custom builders, to divide up the work so each person could specialize, and to offer something no one else could. Instead of a single luthier handling every stage of the build, we made the shop a place where each person could become world-class at their part of the process. That allowed us to consistently deliver something unique—and to focus on the details that make each guitar truly personal.

In those early years, what did you imagine the company becoming—and how has reality compared?

In some ways, the reality has been beyond anything I could have imagined. We started out making guitars for acquaintances, and word spread—Michael Hedges, Daniel Hecht, Will Ackerman, people from the Windham Hill circle—but eventually that chain of friends of friends was going to run out.

Looking back, there’s been a lot of intuition, faith, and pure serendipity. We got big breaks, like coverage in Frets magazine that put us in the international spotlight. In hindsight it all seems logical, but at the time it was just one step after another.

The gratifying part is that we’ve kept to our purpose. For me, guitar making has always been a vehicle for making the world a better place—through our ecological practices, our environmental responsibility, and by doing business in a way that treats people right. At 25, that might have sounded like youthful idealism. Fifty years later, I can point to actual successes and influence in those areas. It’s also given me a platform to encourage other builders to think about right livelihood—how to do well by doing good—and prove that it’s possible.

What changes in the craft or the culture of the guitar world over the last 50 years have most surprised you?

The internet changed everything. Before that, if someone wanted to know about our guitars—whether it was a barber in Nebraska or Eric Clapton in London—they wrote a letter. We’d send photos and a typed reply and hope to make a sale.

Then online forums and websites arrived. Suddenly, someone who had made a dozen guitars could put up a site, reach the whole world, and compete for attention alongside established names. It democratized the craft—and I take some responsibility for that, because I’ve always shared information freely.

The result was an explosion in the number of builders. When I started, I knew, or at least knew of, virtually everyone making guitars in the U.S. Now it’s exponential. And while that means more competition, it’s also elevated the craft as a whole. Techniques, materials knowledge, and shop practices that used to take decades to learn are now accessible in months through online sharing. The culture has shifted from guarded trade secrets to open exchange.

Has your idea of what makes a truly great guitar changed over time?

The fundamentals haven’t changed, but my understanding has deepened. I was lucky to be introduced early to the violin tradition, with its emphasis on qualities like sustain, complexity, and tonal balance—things that aren’t just subjective preferences.

If you don’t look back at your early work and feel a little embarrassed, it means you haven’t progressed. Decades of practice have refined what we do, and we’ve paired that tradition with science. Working with Stanford’s acoustics department and the Naval Postgraduate School, we’ve been able to measure and model what makes an instrument great. Now we can not only repeat those results, but teach them in a way others can understand without having to spend 50 years in the shop.

You’ve always built guitars in a hands-on, old-school way. How do you think about technology now—both the tools you’ve adopted and the ones you’ve left behind?

Technology accelerates our research and our ability to share knowledge. AI, for example, is essentially a search engine that can gather and synthesize decades of scattered information in seconds. In acoustic physics, that means we can model experiments endlessly before cutting a single piece of wood.

We’ve developed a form of modal analysis that helps us match the right piece of wood to the right player and style. The point isn’t to make the best top in some absolute sense—a bluegrass flatpicker and a jazz fingerstylist need very different things. Our technology helps us dial in those requirements with precision, while still building one guitar at a time, by hand. And the more we share that knowledge with others, the more we get back in return, which feeds into a cycle of continuous improvement.

How has your personal relationship with the guitar changed over these decades?

I still love everything about it. My original revelation was: if I could make a guitar, I could do everything I enjoyed at once. That feeling hasn’t gone away.

My role has changed. Years of hands-on work took a toll on my hands, so I don’t play as much as I used to. I spend more time now on administration, promotion, science, and mentoring. But the relationships that come through the guitar—with players, with other builders—remain deeply meaningful.

At 74, part of my job is making sure the people who brought me here are provided for, and that I’m not holding things up by clinging to everything myself. The guitar will always be part of that picture.

You’ve worked with a remarkable range of musicians. Can you share a moment when a player’s feedback made you rethink your work?

One big realization came with Tony Rice. He already had his famous old Martin but wanted something more articulate and less bass-heavy. We built it for him, and other players started calling to order “the Tony Rice guitar.” My first instinct was to say, “We’re a custom shop—let’s make one for you.” But the demand was real, and the Tony Rice model became part of our lineup.

It also reinforced the idea that there’s no single guitar for everyone. Some qualities—sustain, harmonic richness—are universally desirable. Others, like tonal balance, are personal. The challenge is listening carefully enough to translate a player’s needs into a physical instrument, whether they can articulate those needs clearly or not. Sometimes you have to hear them play, watch their touch, and pick up on things they can’t describe in words.

Is there one instrument or model that best captures the soul of Santa Cruz Guitar Company?

I’ll cheat and name two. The FTC—a flattop with a carved, archtop-style back—was designed for maximum articulation, note separation, and projection. It’s hard to explain and harder to market, but for players who get it, there’s nothing else like it. It also helped inspire a more modern aesthetic in guitar building, with its blend of traditional and contemporary lines.

The H13 is a deep-bodied small guitar that combines the airspace and bass response of a larger instrument with the ergonomics of a smaller one. It’s versatile, works for both traditional and modern styles, and has a graceful shape that just looks “right.” It’s also one of the most comfortable guitars we make, which counts for a lot when you’re spending hours with it in your lap.

Your 50th anniversary is right around the corner. What are you planning?

We’ll start the celebrations in June 2026 with an exhibit at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, running through September. I’m also building a guitar for the city entirely from local woods—sycamore back and sides, redwood top, madrone and manzanita for the fingerboard and bridge—each with its own story.

On the product side, we’re putting together what I think of as a greatest hits series. It will bring back the OM/PW, a stripped-down, high-quality OM we introduced in 2000 that was once named one of the most important new guitars of the millennium; the 1929 Series, all-mahogany models we launched during the 2008 financial crash to showcase the tonal beauty of that wood; the FTC, which is rare and complex to build; the H13, the deep-bodied small guitar I mentioned earlier; and the Firefly, a short-scale guitar that continues to surprise people with its full voice. We’ll reissue these in limited numbers as a way of honoring designs that have shaped our history.

Looking ahead, have you thought about succession?

It would be selfish not to. I’ve worked for years on it, with some false starts, and finally realized it’s too risky to hinge on one person. Instead, I’m building a management team with finance, marketing, sales, and production expertise—people who understand not just how we build guitars, but why.

I’m not going anywhere yet. But if something unexpected happens, the company could carry on, honoring our obligations to players. My legacy isn’t about it happening my way. It’s about ensuring that the values and purpose behind Santa Cruz Guitar Company continue.

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.