Officially, I started Hill Guitars in 1989 in my dad's garage, but it had really started back in high school. I built a few guitar bodies in high school woodshop and just loved it. Everything about was cool. I loved going to lumberyards and going through their boards picking out some really cool stuff. I loved cutting and gluing things together and I especially loved finishing the guitar, including the assembly and most of all, I loved watching the customer play it.

Somehow over the years, as the business grew, I slowly got away from what I loved. Everything I was doing was so I could maintain the business. But I don't regret 1 day of the past 25 years. I have definitely had my share of hardships, but it has led me down an incredible path where I have met so many great and interesting people!

Glory Days Part 1

Over the years, as the business grew, it turned into just that: a business. I look back now and that was the direction I thought I needed to go. Those did evolve into the glory days somehow, building and creating some great instruments. I think what separated us from so many other companies was our ability to build something new and different. Very few of my guitar designs were standard. We were a true "Custom Shop,” building what the customer wanted, not necessarily what we wanted. I would always set a few limits, however.(and still do)

One of my first ten guitars was a guitar for a guy that wanted a neck-through, Floyd Rose, with binding and custom inlays, LED side dots, a scalloped fret board – just for starters. I was crazy then and probably overconfident. When you’re 23, you think you can do anything. The guitar came out killer, but this build was a leap of faith and somehow I did it, out of my dad's garage. He still has this guitar and it still plays and that was 20 years ago.

My first shop after my dad’s garage was in Slavic Village in Cleveland, Ohio. The crew in the pre-Dean v1.0 days were all heart and I could barley pay them or myself anything. We worked so hard! My shop was on the 3rd floor of an old building with no working elevator. This meant that all the machines, lumber and customers had to take the stairs. This is where I built Tom Araya's basses (Slayer), we came out with the first few catalogues and business cards. We even did a few trade shows and always tried to be a part of the local community co-sponsoring local events like area guitar shred contests and tried our best to do what we could for the local bands and music scene. Some of my oldest friends and supporters include Mike Szuter, Billy Morris, Aaron Adkins, Michael Stanley, Butch Armstrong and Neil Zaza. The list goes on, but the talent pool in Cleveland at that time, and still is huge. If you don’t know of these guys or the Cleveland talent that circulates, they are definitely the worth checking out.

Within a few years we relocated to a cool shop in downtown Cleveland, on 36th and Superior Avenue. I think it was somewhere around 11,000 square feet. It was awesome. It was on the top floor and had skylights, and a great panoramic view of downtown. I loved it there and we were again making some really great stuff. For me, this was where I really began to come into my own, where I starting to really feel like everything was coming together. We built a lot of superstrats, using a lot of different woods and making some nice basses, using multi-ply neck through, all hand built with some nice flame and quilt. I think this was the point where basses started making sense to me. We would have these "late night bull sessions" on what different parts of a bass can change the sound like finishes, the bridge, fretboard, nut and the woods used in the body and neck. I always had the end all for these sometimes heated debates and that is simply,

"Anybody can tell me that these properties do change the sound of the instrument. What they can't tell me is if it sounds better or worse!”

There is something to "tap tone" however. Mostly it’s about timberance property of the wood. If you tap a board and listen to it, does it have life, or does it sound like a waterlogged piece of driftwood. I like to think that instrument building, not to be confused with simply just guitar building, has always come naturally to me. A guitar something that can be played or it can just be something that sits and looks pretty. Instruments are things that should inspire you to play, write, create, practice. Instruments are built for people that are looking for inspiration. A guitar is just that, a guitar. People collect them, parents buy them for their kids, keeps the repair shops busy, something bought from off the shelf of a store. Obviously there are some killer guitars out there, mine included. An instrument is something built for the player, for the musician because these people know their instrument is a source of inspiration!

With every year, quality kept improving and I was always doing really great things, a lot with neck through guitars and basses. I was heavily influenced by BC Rich, Jackson, ESP. My first opportunity to work with a major manufacturer, however, was Dean Guitars. At the time Dean Guitars (the brand name) was owned by Oscar Maderos of Tropical Music.

I ended up taking that opportunity with Dean v1.0 and moved to Florida, the Plant City era. It really started in Cleveland where I was a ghost builder. In fact all the Plant City guitars were really ghost built for Tropical Music. Our company in Plant City was called "The Music Factory," with Tropical Music as a distributor. At the time they were distributing Mackie, Peavy and I want to say Fender, but all was export to Central and South America. Oscar was one cool ass dude. I am bummed I didn’t get the chance to work with him more, I had to work with Tracy Hoeft.

When Oscar finally closed the door and sold the Dean name to its next owner, Elliott Rubinson, I returned to Cleveland, to the "real world" and took a day job working 9 to 5! It was filled with all the excitement guitar building lacks - I was a CAD Jockey, for a millwork company, I bought nice khacky pants and some Bill Cosby sweaters. I even got some desk accessories ! In the end, I knew it was just a break and that building guitars is my passion, my muse.

Glory Days Part 2

After a three year hiatus of time clocks and cubicles, I started over. This time I was in my own garage in Tremont, a great neighborhood in Cleveland, full of artists and galleries, great food and bars. A normal day would be hours of working solo at home then a stop to see my friendly bartender, Tobin. He became a great help and inspiration and is the greatest 9 ½ fingered guitar playing singer/songwriter I have ever known. While at my garage and house shop, I built some cool creative things, pretty complex for where I was working. One of the more popular guitars was the Superman for my buddy Scoob. It was one of the first where I got a local artist from the art school to paint for me. It was totally out of the comics. Sort of a tribute too, to the creators of Superman, Clevelanders themselves.

I moved the shop out of the garage and took on a crew of guys that not only learned to build awesome instruments, but also have a passion for the industry. They included Kevin, who was my anal-retentive finish and detail sander. He was great at getting perfection every time and he would settle for nothing less. Dan, who had worked with me through everything, starting back when I was working on 36th Street, was always my main dude. Little Aaron did paint work, along with Tori. Mike came on board later, but proved to be a great find. Mike has more patience than anyone and will sit for hours doing inlay work. There were others who lasted awhile here and there, all who were important to me in their own way but for lack of the reader’s attention, I digress. One though, that can’t be forgot, is Lewis. Lewis was the youngest in the shop and was given the best hazing. He loved it and thrived in it. You have never laughed until you have heard his farts, recorded on his phone. 

We were all working in my Cleveland shop on 36th and Superior Avenue, right across the hall, strangely enough, from the old shop we were in before we moved to Plant City. During this period, my bud, Billy Morris introduced me to Robbie Merrill, bass player for GODSMACK. How cool was this !, I built him a few, he took them out on tour and then I get a call from Erik Porter, Stefans bass tech for Dave Mathews. Stefan was backstage at a GODSMACK show and saw the bass. Since then I think I have made Stefan 5 or 6 basses and 1 guitar. I can't thank Billy, Robbie, Erik and Stefan enough, they are great people!

My Spire design also made the cover of Sept/Oct 2006 edition of Musicians Hotline (now Premier Guitar), they did a nice 4 page spread on the company. We also began taking on some "ghost building" accounts (ghost building is an industry term meaning we were building for other companies)I can't mention everyone we did work for, but I was shocked at how common it seemed. We were eventually contacted by Dean Zelinsky himself, who was back working with Dean Guitars and the newest owner, Elliott Rubinson to build some of their stuff. I had this chill run down my spine and I just somehow knew I was gonna be moving back to Florida, but not just yet. Hill Guitars was still struggling to make ends meet and my financial business partner was running out of money, but Our first job for Dean was the Dave Mustaine limited edition V's, a 150pc run.(if i was a Dean Collector, absolutley must have guitar) We built them all in our Cleveland shop and this really showed what we could accomplish with larger production runs. But the only orders that were gonna come from Dean were very small and with no other money coming in, we were broke and had to shut things down. My business partner at the time didn’t seem to care, so I called Dean to see where they were at, they had mentioned bringing it in house, so within a few short weeks, we had a deal and my wife and I were on our way to Florida setting up a brand new shop from scratch.

Dean v2.0 in 2007. Over the next 2 years, I did some great work that I am extremely proud of. I have built absolutely, unquestionably, beyond the shadow of a doubt, some of my best work ever and it was by far the best stuff that Dean ever sent out their doors. One of the things I really respected about my boss Elliott is the way he pushes people to be their best. Because of that motivation, we had a lot of magic happen in that shop in the just a few short years.

These were some of the projects I was involved with at Dean;

Leslie West 40th anniversary (there are only 10)

Checkmate, coolest guitar ever, including ebony and maple bobbins

84,88,74, Scotti Hill
Vinnie Moore
Hillsboro bass
Spire bass
Uli Roth

Rev Jones
Doug Pennick
Custom shop ML with thorns
Deceiver
Jeff Berlin
Mustaine Double neck (another good one to collect)
and many others, bottom line, a lot of really cool stuff

Glory Days to come

With the Dean v2.0 coming to an end, what's next for me? Something different for sure. I love those guys over at Dean, but I am really looking for something different and definitely more personal.

I really want to change instrument building. My new rule on custom instruments is a quick background check. I just have a few basic questions; why do you want a new Instrument? What type of insrument have you been playing? what is your favorite? What types of music do you play, what type of amp? Will this be for a tour, for a studio, for a collection? And what are you looking for in a new instrument? These are basic questions, but for me, its what makes the difference between an Instrument Builder and a Guitar Builder.

I do have a few final thoughts;

1 your only as good as your last build
2 the customer has to be satisfied when completed

I like taking back the role of dealing with the client 1 on 1, taking all the photos and building on a very limited basis, but super high quality.

CNC Machines - they get a bad rap. they have the abilty to take the "soul" out of a guitar, but lets just say, you need to have balance between man and machine. I love engineering and automated equipment, although I didn't go to school for any of this, i just learned on my own. I don't want people to think that I got an engineering degree and somehow ended up building guitars. Completely opposite. But I do feel guitar manufacturers still need to find a balance between CNC Routers and automated equipment and the artistic, hands-on building.

It takes a long time to finish sand and detail a guitar, 3 or 4 hours. It's more than half the total labor, before paint. That's a big deal. There are manufacturing methods that can speed things up a bit, but at the end of the day, is that how you would want your guitar built? Speed over quality? I have seen every piece of automated equipment and I have researched all kinds of crazy hand tools and abrasives and I would say it's almost impossible to finish sand a guitar properly other than doing the task at hand, by hand. Finish sanding a guitar to me is a ritual. It's not easy. It is definitely a test of patience. What the kicker is for me, I start really feeling like I am bringing this instrument to life and I know it sounds crazy, but different woods have a different sound or resonance when you sand them. As a builder this, for me, is when a bunch of pieces of glued together woods finally start the journey into becoming an instrument.

A few "shout outs" to the people that have changed the way I think about being an artist and building Instruments.

My Dad, Harvey
My wife Amanda
James Barber, an Artists artist
Todd Szopo, friend/brother photographer/artist
Jeff Daw, friend/brothero all my BS
Robert Abram, for support, ideas and listining to all my BS and performing he best "fat bastard" impression ever !
Doug Johns, the dude, that taught me that there is a difference between .00003" and .00002"
Kevin Kadar (kevin_loves_febreeze@bootlegguitars.com). Thank you for being THE MOST anal-retentive finish sander and detailer that ever existed. You have inspired me!
Brad Pinkerton, all around cool dude
Craig Lee, for teaching me how to live my life
Eric Oliver, for helping above and beyond the call of duty
Studying under the master is, of course, Lewis Cross (lewis_needs_a_date@bootlegguitars.com) AKA Kevin's wingman. Lewis can make you laugh or make you cry just by breaking wind, but I would have no one else finish sand my guitars (except Kevin, of course).

Somewhere over the years I have learned that I strive for perfection at each and every step of the process and I am definitely compulsive about it. I want to continue this in the next chapter of my life. There are a bunch of little steps in the instrument building process that I am very persnickety about. Though I won't go through all the details because that could take a lifetime, I have built guitars and been woodworking for my whole life. Many things are just instinctive to me. I can't just look at a piece of wood and say, "This top should go to this back," and crap like that, don't get me wrong. I think about what woods will go together, but for me, it's about the individual pieces of wood. I can almost envision where this tree grew, and the older it is, the better. Again, I am not the expert and people can argue what they want, but if I was building a guitar for myself, there is only 1 way I would want to do it. I would want to know the answer to these following questions: What was the age of the tree? When was the tree cut? Where was it cut? Under what conditions? - how was it cut, stickered and most importantly how was it dried? Maple is maple by no means. The goal is to help educate our customers with these and other questions as they consider having a custom instrument for themselves. As far as fretboards, quarter sawn, straight grain, maybe check for "tap tone," which as I’ve mentioned is very real. It always amazes me how timberant woods are and how each piece sounds different. I hope someday to have a little video demo on this with sound quality so you can hear what I hear. But again, IF I have to build that "ONE" guitar for myself, I get all "zen" about it...but that's where I do my best work, not behind a desk trying to manage production. I want to take that perfection that I strive for and turn it into something extrodinary.

Not only do I look for great quality in what I put into making an instrument, I also love being creative and artistic. Since recently becoming a "self proclaimed artist." I am now feeling I should live up to a new and much different standard. I got the hat and the glasses as part of re-establishing my image. Haven't changed my name yet (although I may have to for legal reasons.) But I am not the 1st guitar builder to lose my name for one reason or another. Dean would be the perfect example. It was cool getting to work with Mr. Zelinsky - the man... the myth... the LEGEND. He and I weren't so great working for others, although he certainly achieved way more success than I have. But Zelinsky gave me something that the guitar building world and its people need - goodwill!

Working with him was a great education, he truely understands that marketing involves a bit more than magazine ads and a trade show, its about building relationships and networking.

Now...readers...please remember that at all times when I am paying people the highest compliments and highest regards, I'm still far superior to them. I may repeat myself on this subject a few times, so please don't send me "correction" e-mails, send them to my wife. She is in charge of all of the written text that goes up on the web site. More on her later...(i really don't think like this)

So after 25 years of building, repairing and designing guitars and after all of the people I have met over these great years, I want to take what I’ve learned and start turning out some truely world class instruments and we'll see how the next chapter of my life turns into the Glory Days !

Jon R. Hill

"all we need is peace, love and understanding" elvis costello