Hancock Archtop Guitars

Notes from a luthier

By Kim Hancock

How I started

For the past six generations my family have been involved in fine timber working, my great grandfather, Arthur Collingwood was a very well known English artisan who worked on many London landmark buildings. My original occupation was cabinetmaker joiner from 1973 to1987, at which time I started repairing, restoring, collecting and studying the history of guitar construction. I started to build guitars from 1990 with my sons Dane and Sean, who have gone on to become outstanding luthiers and university graduates.

Why Archtops?

I was primarily a builder of concert classical guitars, however in 1997 I was asked by friend David Ireland (David has ten guitars from us at last count) to build a carved top guitar in a similar style to a Gibson L7 with some cosmetic changes. Since I have had an appreciation of Jazz since my childhood I decided to build two, one for David and one for myself.

Since then I have slowly built more and more archtops. Initially my designs stayed fairly close to the L7, then, as I got a hold on what makes the archtop work in various ways, I slowly made minor changes to improve the structure tone and aesthetics, giving a traditional look with modern playability and appointments and a sound that is suitable for all styles of Jazz.

The classical guitar and jazz

The classical is now more popular than ever with jazz guitarists. The guitar that I feel has all the characteristics most suitable for this style is based on the Miguel Rodriguez ‘Church Door’ these guitars have an extremely quick response, project very well, have excellent string separation and volume enabling each note to be clearly heard when playing very quick passages. Unfortunately Miguel Rodriguez II passed away in the late 1990s And his guitars are now selling for around US$20,000 to US$30,000. I was fortunate enough to closely inspect and make plans of one of the last guitars Rodriguez made and have worked on many guitars based around this.

"The most important thing for me is to enjoy what I do and my enjoyment comes from slowly hand crafting each part of the instrument so that it is perfect and tonally correct. Then when all these parts become one I know I have created an outstanding instrument in every respect."