Santa Cruz Guitar Company
Guitar Co. Tony Rice D Model Acoustic Guitar - New
Listed at Gryphon Stringed Instruments · Palo Alto, CA
Tracked on Tonewood Atlas — view the full listing at Gryphon Stringed Instruments’ site.
Photos hot-linked from Gryphon Stringed Instruments’ site — never rehosted.
Specs
- Top
- Sitka Spruce
- Back / Sides
- East Indian Rosewood
- Neck
- Mahogany
- Fingerboard
- Ebony
- Body shape
- D
- Scale length
- 25.375"
- Nut width
- 1 11/16"
- Frets to body
- 14
- Strings
- 6
- Cutaway
- No
- Condition
- New
Santa Cruz Guitar Company
Santa Cruz Guitar Company has built guitars in Santa Cruz, California since 1976, when Richard Hoover founded the shop to bring violin-lutherie traditions into acoustic guitar building. Each top is tap-tuned by hand in a strictly climate-controlled workshop. The shop's connection with Tony Rice — the Tony Rice Model is modeled on his pre-war Martin D-28 — anchored its reputation in bluegrass flatpicking, and the catalog has expanded over five decades into a deep custom-shop operation where most builds are individually specified rather than spec-built.
Gryphon Stringed Instruments
Gryphon Stringed Instruments began in a Palo Alto garage in 1969, building steel-string guitars, F-style mandolins, and banjo necks. Repair work overtook luthiery by 1972, and a 1973 storefront made the retail-plus-repair shift permanent. The shop also runs as a longstanding music school — Carol McComb's Folk Guitar Workshops anchor an instruction calendar that operates alongside the retail floor. Mainstays remain acoustic guitars, mandolins, and banjos, with a deliberate share of the catalog given to small companies and individual makers, and no commissioned sales staff.