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Santa Cruz Guitar Company
We're proud of the way we make our guitars, and we'd like to take you through the shop and tell you what goes into making each Santa Cruz Guitar Company instrument as unique as each player. Bluegrass UnlimitedBy David McCartyThe world of small-shop, custom-quality guitar making was very different thirty years ago than it is today. Modern players have grown up with the luxury of having a handful of great limited production guitar companies and hundreds of talented individual luthiers eager to produce a flattop guitar that's perfect for their individual bluegrass and flatpicking styles. But in the early 1970s, one man and one shop helped pioneer the concept of the "boutique guitar" at a time when even finding a new Martin D-28 wasn't always easy.  Elegant, beautifully crafted, containing only the finest tonewoods the world can offer, each Santa Cruz guitar offers its owner a unique sound, look and feel. Through his long-time association with bluegrass guitar legend Tony Rice and the company's world-famous Tony Rice model dreadnought patterned after Rice's classic 1935 Martin D-28 with the enlarged soundhole, Santa Cruz has helped wean traditionally oriented bluegrass guitarists away from stock models and helped them discover new tones suitable for new styles of flatpicking and acoustic guitar music. Today, the strikingly beautiful guitars that emerge from their small operation just outside San Francisco have become treasured instruments for notable players such as Russ Barenberg, Norman Blake, Doc Watson, Dan Tyminski, James Nash of the Waybacks, Eric Clapton, Elvis Costello, Gillian Welch, and dozens more. At least half the guitars they make are custom-ordered, built to the player's exact specifications regarding tone woods, scale length, inlay patterns, finishes, and other features. It's the best of both worlds, Hoover feels, offering the personalized touches usually associated only with working with an individual luthier, coupled with the economies of scale and resources available to a well organized, small scale manufacturing company. Hoover grew up surrounded by music and art, so his choice of guitar making as a profession seemed preordained. His mother was a pianist, and he began taking lessons for his eighth birthday. "My birthday present when I turned nine was to stop taking lessons," he laughs, adding that structured lessons "almost destroyed me musically." His musical nature soon turned to the guitar, which he admits also had more than a little to do with wanting to attract the attention of a certain girl at his high school who loved folk music. "So I got serious about playing the guitar," he relates. "Somewhat later, I was struck by the fact that someone has to make these things." His father was a commercial artist who worked in wood and other media, and Richard was always encouraged to explore and tinker with things. "So I took my $47 Harmony guitar apart and tried to figure it out," Hoover says now. Back then, no instruction material for building fretted instruments existed, and there were virtually no active builders who could provide guidance. He spent time trying to fix friends' guitars and studying instruments to figure out what he could about how they were manufactured, but with limited success. The only written materials he could find that approached the subject were books on making violins. "That turned out to be a real blessing," he explains. "I learned a lot of stuff I would have never learned otherwise. What I learned about violin making helps today in balancing the tonality and the production of overtones that are hallmarks of our guitars."  Hoover's goal was to build steel string guitars that transcended the limitations of existing guitars in terms of tonality, sustain, and sophisticated over-tones. "That was not the nature of the steel string guitar at the time," Hoover says, comparing assembly line guitar manufacturing to building washing machines or automobiles, where parts were created in batches and then assembled into a finished product. It's an admittedly efficient process, but it cannot produce the characteristics he wanted in his new line of guitars. Not long after, Hoover chanced upon mandolin building operation in the Bay Area that included Darol Anger, who also was the violinist for the original David Grisman Quintet. In the summer of 1977, Darol brought by the newest addition to Grisman's progressive acoustic quintet, a brilliant but as-yet relatively unknown flatpicking guitarist named Tony Rice. "I showed Tony some of my guitars, and he was looking for something to use besides his old D-28 on the road. He felt he needed a guitar better suited for jazz phrasings and with more treble for the lead lines he was playing with Grisman. He was very impressed with our ability to produce a balanced-sounding dreadnought," Hoover says. After continuing to build on his own, Hoover encountered two potential mentors, Bruce McGuire and Jim Patterson, who shared his passion for making guitars. He attracted two partners, Bruce Ross and William Davis, who formed the company with him. They started out working out of a garage, selling the guitars for $500. The fledgling company replied with an instrument that packaged its trademark balanced, rich-toned sound in a dreadnought style body. "He hated the first one," Hoover says now with a smile. "We took it back and made one with a cedar top, because he wanted the guitar to sound old right now." This process continued about every three years, as Rice would come back with new requests and new ideas on how to get the tone and playability he needed and Hoover would patiently redesign the guitar. Before long, musicians amazed by Rice's guitar work began calling Hoover asking to buy a guitar like Rice's. But initially, Hoover turned them down because he felt it was a custom guitar just for Rice. After receiving a number of calls, however, the businessman in him awoke to the idea that there was a clear and growing market for this guitar design, and the Tony Rice model was born. It remains the largest-selling individual model in the company's lineup today. Buoyed by the almost cult status its star guitar achieved, the company quickly grew and prospered. Its second location that had started as a mere 1,000 square feet operation grew to the bursting point at 7,000 square feet, prompting a move five years ago to their current location. Lacking even an exterior sign to reveal what goes on inside the modern, industrial building surrounded by a variety of innovative companies ranging from skateboard and bicycle manufacturers to a company that produces 3-D holograms used on some foreign currencies, today's Santa Cruz Guitar Company operation was designed from one end to the other solely for the creation of world-class guitars. Inside, the shop includes an office area for sales, marketing, customer service, and other business functions, and five individual work areas where each step in the process of guitar manufacturing is broken down by specific need.  Related tasks, such as bending the sides and assembling them into a complete guitar body ready for its top, neck, and back, are grouped logically and assigned to individual builders, allowing them to specialize in specific aspects of the process to attain the highest levels of proficiency. By designing his production system to allow each instrument to receive almost unlimited individual attention, Hoover believes he can manipulate the tonal qualities and other aspects of his guitars to match almost any player's desires. The 14 craftspeople he employs all come from a background in guitar making or instrument crafts, and many are graduates of the world's top instrument making schools. "The most important thing is our philosophy of building every instrument as a team. That's the key to our quality. People come in here with a passion for making guitars; it's not just a job," he says excitedly. Currently, his workforce includes employees ranging from three months to 15 years, and many of his former employees have gone on to successful careers as individual luthiers using the skills and work ethic they learned at Santa Cruz Guitars. Hoover also singles out Dan Roberts, who performs most of the warranty and other service work on SCGC instruments, as a key team member. He's also especially proud of his company's commitment to environmentally responsible wood use. A seasoned world-traveler, Hoover and his wife often scour remote areas of the planet looking for wood that has been harvested in an environmentally responsible manner. Sometimes he buys wood taken from standing deadfall, or wood recycled from ancient structures. Not only does this preserve still living trees, it also provides him with wood that may be seventy years old or more from the living tree, allowing the sap inside its cells to harden and crystallize. This wood sounds nearly identical to wood that has been in a vintage guitar for a half century or more, giving him an edge in building new instruments that already have vintage tone and feel. "When we get wood that has that advantage, it's almost like cheating," Hoover explains. The Santa Cruz Guitar Company recently completed its ten-thousandth guitar, a feat Hoover and his friends, backers, mentors, and coworkers probably could not have envisioned when he was just starting out. Between twenty and thirty percent of the company's guitars are exported, with Germany and the U.K. being the biggest markets and Japan being another major area of interest. Last year, SCGC produced just under 770 guitars, with production for 2006 set to be slightly higher. Players in the market for a Santa Cruz Guitar Company instrument can expect retail prices ranging from just under $3,000 to a top price of $8,500 for the Tony Rice Professional model. Custom work and the rare archtop guitars SCGC produces can go for $15,000 or more. For the recent NAMM musical instrument exposition in Los Angeles, SCGC unveiled a new flatpicking guitar called the D-H that does not use scalloped bracing like the Tony Rice model and most other dreadnoughts based on vintage Martin guitar designs. Instead, it uses a specially designed tapered bracing system that creates a fuller, less bass heavy sound many modern players prefer as they explore musical styles beyond traditional bluegrass. An active IBMA member, Santa Cruz Guitars supports numerous bluegrass festivals and works closely with many bluegrass artists to help them find suitable instruments. Deeply committed to music education, the company also quietly supports a number of music education programs aimed at helping ensure that school kids can learn about music and the guitar. While he personally voices and tunes the tops of some guitars on a special order basis, Hoover more often is out finding and buying great wood, attending trade shows and industry events, visiting dealers, and handling other aspects of the company's business. Smiling broadly behind his trademark beard, he clearly loves what he does, and sees a bright future for his company. "Our innovations have been adapted industrywide, and I'm very satisfied with our growth. We don't have to worry about marketshare, we're going to be fine. We have no plans to copy ourselves in China. And now we're making the best stuff we ever have. I'm proud that we helped get boutique guitars into the game." Reprinted by permission Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine, www.bluegrassmusic.com, 1-800-BLU-GRAS. Copyright March 2006. All rights reserved. Take a photo tour of our shop »
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