Modern OM Build

This guitar was finished (and sold) a year or so ago. It was my take on a modern OM fingerstyle guitar, with a unique body size a little smaller than a typical OM and inspired by the shape of the Larson Euphonon, with square shoulders and a curvy lower bout.

It had a european spruce top with some cool bearclaw to it, and sapele back and sides, which was a deep orange colour with some wicked striping. The body was kept quite deep to make up for the smaller footprint the guitar had. I also wanted the back to be active, so kept the braces small and relieved the center slightly with an arch. The hope was this would let the back vibrate a bit more without losing strength.

I wanted the guitar to look really unique, and settled on a solid ebony rosette that came right to soundhole. The rest of the guitar had ebony binding, ebony headstock veneer, and some neat checkerboard purfling. Ebony is my favourite binding wood as it contrasts so well against a pale spruce soundboard.

Other design choices included a tapered headstock, to allow for a straight line between the nut slots and the tuning posts. I am convinced this is a practical way of improving string life, intonation and tone. Every little counts! I used gotoh gold open backed tuners. These looked great against all the ebony. I had evo gold fretwire too.

The finished guitar sounded brilliant. Very responsive with a pure tone typical for a euro spruce top. A great fingerstyle guitar with a very unique look.

About a month after first stringing it up I actually thinned the bridge slightly, scraping a couple millimeters off the top. This reduced the weight and helped the guitar open up a bit more. Having a light and strong bridge is super important in making a good sounding guitar.