“Gold Label” Adirondack / Honduras Mahagony 2025

Hozen Guitars are built in Huadu, Guangzhou, in a small atelier of three or four luthiers led by Ho Zen Yong, who worked largely self-taught before studying voicing with Ervin Somogyi and spending some fifteen years building under the Maestro name. The instruments are built for response above anything else: light and quick, louder than their size suggests, with deep bass and sparkling top held in balance rather than one flattering the other. He is sceptical of visual wood grading and of the prestige attached to Brazilian rosewood, choosing backs and sides for how they answer instead — which is why ziricote, cocobolo and African blackwood turn up on his instruments where much of the market reaches for Indian rosewood. Comfort is treated as engineering: a wedge, an armrest, and a soundport turned back toward the player.