In a world saturated with guitars, people wonder: "What makes Hozen Guitars different? My guitars and my story is very unique in the world of Guitar Building. We live in a world where brands and companies can produce guitars in the hundreds of thousands per year. They are recognized worldwide with their fit and finish just as perfect as you know, they're wonderful.
But the one thing that these large companies cannot do is to build what we call a 'highly responsive' instrument. An instrument that when played softly or when you dig in and push, it responds to the way you want. It's even, balanced and has lush rich overtones; the type of guitar that you would get from a very skilled and experienced single built luthier.
It is practically impossible to do this on a large scale. Every individual piece of wood has its strengths and varying stiffness which results in different tonal capabilities. Any guitar production company can offer the choice of superb quality wood; but bringing out the best out of every single guitar, it's what you do with those planks as you are building.
An experienced builder, especially in a single build process, will pay attention to the minute intricacies while the guitar is being built. The top as you brace, the flex, feeling how the top responds as you excite it and adjust it’s position and mass for the ideal tonal response. Exact measurements and having a general template does matter, but making the right judgments to create a responsive top comes down to experience. Years of it. It takes a highly trained ear to be able to discern and bring life to each individual plank.
In the world of responsive guitar building, you find many luthiers with various schools of thought. One of the more prominent and influential ones is led by Master Luthier Ervin Somogyi. Somogyi definitely is considered one of the best modern guitar builders of this generation. The incredible thing here is that Hozen moved away from his very successful retail music business with multiple branches, to follow his desire and his passion to start building guitars. And at some point in that process, Hozen realized that if he wanted to make some of the world’s best and most responsive guitars, that he would have to travel to the USA to learn from the best.
Hozen reached out to Somogyi and he explained to him my vision and wanted to learn his voicing process and apply it to his own builds. Somogyi kindly agreed. He traveled to the USA for specialized tuition with Ervin Somogyi and the rest is history. What is really valuable is that even after the course, they still maintain contact and they continue to exchange ideas. Hozen consider Somogyi to be my friend, my master and mentor.
What makes these guitars so unique is we have someone who's learned the coveted secrets of make responsive guitars. But, instead of going home to say: ”Hey I'm just going to make 12 guitars a year and charge mega dollars for them!”, Hozen took that knowledge back to his workshop and worked out a very unique process where he voices and designs every single instrument while his team of luthiers painstakingly carve and assemble the guitar in the way he expects them to. His workshop in China has 10 other skilled luthiers working in tandem with him as a team. They can manage 400-500 builds over a period of 12 months with team building as each luthier focuses on a very specific part of the build process. This not only ensures consistency, but with every build the team members constantly improve and become masters at their craft, becoming second nature to them.
While the guitars are being assembled, Hozen chisels, sands, and tapes to ensure every single guitar’s tonal potential is fully maximized.
And it is fully reflected in these Hozen Guitars. It's truly remarkable how these guitars are competing with some of the best of the single build luthiers in quality, but also offering overwhelming value among it's peers in the price bracket. It's just simply amazing to offer to musicians the opportunity to own a guitar that can really truly rival a single build guitar. Most people can’t afford these outstanding single build guitars and that's the sad truth. A lot of times, the very best instruments don't go to the players because of the sky-high prices.
The ergonomics are also a very important factor for Hozen. If you are playing fingerstyle or are a serious student, you are probably going to be practicing for hours everyday. Hozen has built his guitars with the Bevelled Armrest, Soundport, Florentine Cutaway and also incorporated the famous “Manzer” wedge which introduces a tapered body construction on his guitars. The tapered structure gives you the same amount of air space in the guitar while it feels like a smaller guitar in your arms. You don’t need to sacrifice comfort for tone. Hozen also uses PLEK machine to precisely level and crown the frets for the perfect actions. These are they reasons why people play them in stores and go , “WOW! I can't believe how easy this plays and how beautiful the action is!”
In all, Hozen managed to find a way to make a boutique, luxury level instrument through the team building process(Similar to a recent project of various individual luthiers collaborating together to make a single guitar) and managing the production costs. He spends six months of the year living in China working alongside his team, away from the comfort of his Singaporean home and family.
The level of dedication and passion he has for these instruments is truly second to none. This passion to bring such high quality instruments in this team building setting is why we are so excited because again it's a unique story. It's a unique passion. Every single person that is lucky enough to own one of these guitars will understand what we're talking about.
If you're lucky enough to try one or get your hands on one you will not regret it! Check them out!
