I have a really great guitar, a really nice guitar, and I have one little guitar for my office/travel.
After much reading, a couple of trips to Mandolin Brothers to play tons of great guitars, and one visit to Tom Loredo (a nice netizen who runs Jim Olson's web site) to try his Olson guitar, my mind was finally made up. My husband agreed to let me order a cedar topped Olson SJ in December 1998. It arrived October 24, 2000. I'm very excited about it. Here are my Olson first impressions.
I am having trouble taking digital pictures that I'm happy with. Click on any picture below to see a larger (approximately 60K each) version. Please use the back button on your browser to return to this page. I don't have good full front or full back pictures yet, but I'm a musician, not a photographer... Jim Olson has plenty of pictures of his instruments at his web site (please see the link below).
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I am still as enamored with the Olson as I was when I first received it last year. The more I play, the more I want to play. It has a beautiful sound and is really inspiring me to practice quite a bit. Maybe some day I'll put up sound files.
I have a Guild D-50NT, circa 1979 that was a birthday gift from my parents. It is a wonderful instrument, solid rosewood back and sides, solid spruce top, deep, hearty Dreadnought. It served me well during my teen years and beyond, and I still like it too much to sell it. I hadn't been playing much, and my husband bought me a subscription to Acoustic Guitar magazine a couple of years ago. It got me back into playing, and opened my mind to new possibilities. I started playing in open tunings, and thinking about getting another guitar a little more suited to fingerstyle playing.
I got this on one of those trips to Mandolin Brothers. This is a 3/4 size guitar, roundback (some synthetic material or other) but great for travel and sits quietly in a corner of my office when not in use. Not bad sound for what it is, and much nicer than the Martin Backpacker guitar. I went there to try the Martin but didn't like it after I heard it. Baby Taylors were out of my price range for that purchase, and probably I would have "babied" a Taylor too much. The Applause is a good knock around guitar and was even better after the good folks and Mandolin Brother's properly compensated the saddle.
What a store. What service. What a great collection of instruments. I also fell in love with a couple of Breedlove guitars when I was there. Breedlove uses a wood called striped ebony, that in combination with the JLD bridge system produces an absolutely hypnotic sound (to my ears). I almost bought a striped ebony C20 6 string, and I still wish I had written down the serial number of the striped ebony 12 string that I tried. That was a marvelous instrument. Sigh. I recommend them to anyone who can't afford (or can't wait for) an Olson.
Last modified: November 10, 2001
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