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. The shop's wood philosophy emphasizes reclamation and sustainable harvesting; tonewood selection often draws from reclaimed or salvaged sources rather than freshly-cut stock. Construction features include radiused parabolic bracing — engineered for resonance at lower mass — and dovetail neck joints rather than bolt-on construction, both choices the shop frames as acoustic decisions rather than tradition for its own sake. The team operates as a true custom shop; most builds are individually specified for tonewoods, body shape, neck dimensions, and appointments rather than pulled from a fixed-spec catalog.