Santa Cruz Guitar Company

Richard Hoover founded Santa Cruz Guitar Company in 1976, in a small shop in the city the company is named for. The premise from the start was unconventional for boutique acoustic guitar building: borrow the techniques of master violin luthiers — tap-tuning each top to its resonance frequency, hand-shaping bracing for individual response — and apply them to flat-top steel-string construction. Hoover has run the shop continuously for nearly five decades; he's both the founder and the still-active luthier directing the team. Santa Cruz's reputation was made in the bluegrass flatpicking world. Tony Rice partnered with the shop on the Tony Rice Model — a guitar designed to evoke the pre-war Martin D-28 voice that Rice was known for. The model became one of the most iconic boutique signature instruments in modern acoustic music, and Santa Cruz became the natural answer to "who builds the modern equivalent of a pre-war Martin?" Other notable players include Brad Paisley and Eric Skye, both of whom have Santa Cruz signature models. Santa Cruz has become one of the most committed reclaimed-wood shops in the business. Hoover has long built with salvaged and responsibly sourced timber — old-growth redwood recovered from the San Lorenzo River, beams from century-old churches, downed Hawaiian koa — alongside sustainably sourced exotic tonewoods from around the world, on the argument that older, settled wood is both the better environmental choice and the better-sounding one. Construction runs to scalloped, pre-war-style bracing with parabolic profiles — engineered for resonance at lower mass — hot hide glue, and dovetail neck joints rather than bolt-on, all framed as acoustic decisions rather than tradition for its own sake. The team works as a true custom shop, turning out only 400–500 guitars a year, most individually specified for tonewoods, body shape, neck dimensions, and appointments rather than pulled from a fixed-spec catalog.