Hozen Guitars

Ho Zen Yong — known as Hozen — came to lutherie from the music retail side: he ran a successful Singapore retail shop with multiple branches before deciding to build the kind of instruments he was selling. The pivotal move was a pilgrimage to California to train directly under Ervin Somogyi, the luthier most widely credited with refining the modern responsive-voicing approach. The two have stayed in close contact since, and Somogyi's influence runs through everything in the Hozen workshop: the bracing philosophy, the double-sides construction, the French-polished interiors for humidity stability, the focus on tonal response over fit-and-finish ornament. What sets Hozen apart from most Somogyi students is what he did next. Hozen runs an unusual operation. He lives in Singapore but spends roughly half the year in Guangzhou, China, where his three-luthier team handles the assembly stages — finish, neck work, binding — each specializing in their portion of the build.