Under the mentorship of Ervin Somogyi, one of the most renowned authorities on responsive guitars, Hozen has mastered the art of voicing. His bracing techniques are akin to an irrigation system in farming—guiding vibrations across the soundboard like water flows through channels, resulting in exceptional tone, responsiveness, and structural integrity.
Hozen personally voices every guitar his team assembles, ensuring maximum tonal potential. He oversees every detail, including finishing, bracing structures, bridge designs, tonewood selection, neck geometry, and setups, to guarantee each guitar meets his high standards.
Influenced by Somogyi, Hozen incorporates advanced features such as double sides, French-polished interiors for enhanced humidity stability, and innovative bracing designs. Years of refinement led to his signature Hozen Lattice Brace, producing the three-dimensional sound of the Blue Labels. For the Black Labels, Hozen developed new bracing systems offering incredible responsiveness while streamlining the process. His adaptations of traditional X bracing for the Red Labels and carbon-fiber bridge plates for Green Label ukuleles showcase his ingenuity.
Ergonomics
At Hozen Guitars, every instrument is crafted as a timeless piece—a guitar meant to be cherished for life and passed down through generations. This philosophy drives the focus on ergonomics to create guitars that not only sound extraordinary but feel incredible to play.
Signature features like the PLEK setup, soundport, Florentine cutaway, Manzer wedge, and Laskin armrest are hallmarks of the Black and Blue Labels. These elements significantly enhance playability and comfort, setting Hozen Guitars apart. For the Green Label ukuleles, unique features like the Uchida-style beveled offset cutaway add to their appeal.
The Manzer wedge, for instance, offers the feel of a smaller guitar while maintaining tonal depth, making it ideal for players with shoulder issues. The back bevel improves comfort by preventing the player's body from muting the back of the guitar, allowing for a more "live" response.
Team-Built
Combining hand-voiced precision with ergonomic excellence is labor-intensive, but Hozen’s innovative "team-built" approach makes it possible. By delegating specialized tasks to highly skilled team members, efficiency is increased, and costs are significantly reduced—by as much as 400%.
Over 13 years, Hozen has built a team of exceptional luthiers, each specializing in specific aspects of guitar construction. The finish, for example, is handled by a luthier with 20 years of experience, while another expert focuses solely on necks, and a binding specialist brings unmatched expertise in that area. This allows Hozen to dedicate his time to voicing tops with his signature precision.
Hozen drew inspiration for this team-building approach from a collaborative luthier project, where each builder focused on a specific guitar component. This collaborative process ensures each guitar is a masterpiece, combining Hozen’s meticulous attention to tonal quality with the extraordinary craftsmanship of his team. Despite taking an average of six months to complete each guitar, this approach enables unparalleled quality at a fraction of the cost of traditional boutique guitars.
Communication is key to this process, ensuring each step meets strict quality standards before moving to the next. While single builders rely on their own oversight, Hozen’s team thrives on synergy, making their operation rare and exceptional.By specializing tasks, Hozen Guitars achieves incredible tonal richness and craftsmanship in every guitar. This efficient yet uncompromising process has made Hozen Guitars one of the most innovative and accessible boutique brands, offering world-class instruments at a fraction of the price.
The Labels
RED LABEL
Traditional inspired instruments. Recreations of the golden era guitars. I take inspiration from various famous player’s guitars like Tony Rice, Johnny Cash. Further up on the red deluxe, trying my best to recreate amazing museum pieces like the Martin D-50, 19th century martins but in our own Singaporean style designs at the same time showcasing our workmanship. We adopt modern elements that we believe in such as rigid rim, wider saddle slot, carbon-fibre neck reinforcements, ultra-thin environmental friendly PU finish while marrying old-school hide glue and techniques in building. Tone is fundamentals-focus and is something most people are familiar with.
BLACK LABEL
Handmade in small batches using select materials, The black label is the symbol of ergonomics with a lush and rich tone that is tuned specifically for expressive music such as fingerstyle. All the black labels come with my proprietary bracing which Hozen have refined over the years and ergonomic features such as the CSB and Tapered body or affectionately called the ”Manzer” wedge after the person who created this. Accompanying the Hozen sound is its iconic look – a coherent minimalistic design across the entire line, highlighting the intricacies of our ergonomic features.
GREEN LABEL
Hozen always has an affection for the popular Hawaiian instrument. Bringing his relentless pursuit in providing players access to boutique instruments, he wants the Green Label ukuleles to be visually and tonally striking, With features such as Carbon-fibre reinforcements, Soundport, Beveled Armrest, and “Üchida”style beveled offset cutaway, these ukuleles are a notch higher from its class - a must have for both serious players and hobbyists. The Green labels are handmade in small batches in very limited quantities.
GOLD LABEL
After speaking to many musicians, Hozen desires to create the GOLD standard for musicians: The Ultimate tool for musicians. No over the top fancy designs, just pure tone and response! Born from the bloodline of his Blue Labels, premium selected tonewood, coupled with his signature voicing work, time-consuming rigid-rim constructions with “Manzer” Wedge, perfected with Japan-Made Gotoh Machine heads to polished nut and saddle. The Gold standard for Hozen’s work after honing his skills all these years.
BLUE LABEL
The blue label is Hozen’s vision to create unique heirloom guitars that started the Hozen Guitars brand. It’s basically the same as the Custom Shop program which he personally ran under Maestro Guitars. Everything is top-notched. Made from his private-slash of premium and exotic tonewoods, coupled with his signature voicing work, time-consuming rigid-rim constructions with Back bevel and Tapered body, everything screams perfection from the Gotoh machine heads to the polished nut and saddle. The best of what Hozen can do have been always reserved for the blue labels and it always will be.
