Rich Hoeg has been building guitars in San Francisco for over 30 years.
After an apprenticeship with Michael Tobias at Sierra Guitars in the late 1970's, he worked with Modulus Guitars. While at Modulus he made a custom graphite “neck-through-body” guitar for Jerry Garcia, a pair of matching cocabola-top solid-bodies for Steve Miller, a bass for Jack Casady (on display in San Francisco's Hard Rock Café), and assembled and setup John Entwistle's "Buzzard" bass.

During the early 1990's Rich worked for Chandler Guitars, where he designed three lap steels, including the RH-2 model which is still in production. While at Chandler, Rich designed and built a custom baritone lap steel for Bob Brozman, a custom 12-string semi-hollowbody bass for Tom Peterson of Cheap Trick, and was involved in building guitars for Aerosmith's Joe Perry. By the late 1990's Rich was back at Modulus, where he headed the custom guitar department designing and building unique instruments for Bob Weir and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, Sammy Hagar, and Stephan Lessard (Dave Matthews Band).

Rich left Modulus in 2005 to concentrate on his own Business: Hoeg Guitars. One of the first instruments Rich built under his own name was for Bob Weir: a copy of Bob's brother's 1956 Telecaster.  While at Modulus he codesigned with Bob and built his "Lighning Bolt" guitar.  This guitar has been one of his main instruments for almost 10 years.  Recently, he finished another vintage style swamp ash 3 pickup guitar which has seen heavy use on Furthur's 2010 tour.  

Other projects have included a unique travel guitar for Joyce Cooling, a stylin' Hoegenator for Will Bernard, an Explorer made of African limba for Henry Kaiser, and a series of groundbreaking graphite resonators. These resonator guitars are to be featured on an upcoming Kokomo Records release, as performed with by various artists including Ken and Phil Emerson, Duck Baker and Gary King.