OM – Christian Allen Luthiery

Navashen is one of those dudes you meet, where at first you might think him to be quite, but then you realize he operates in the ultra-mellow mind field where very few things can ruffle his strength in calmness. In short, he’s a really cool dude. After seeing a mutual friend’s acoustic I had built, he asked if I would build him one, of course I said I would. When I asked him what he wanted it to be, all he said was “Ananda.” A Sanskrit word meaning Divine Bliss; and also the namesake of the spiritual group we both happen to be a part of. Other than than, it was up to me to make all the decisions.

A few months before he had asked me to build the guitar, my wife and I were in Hawaii visiting family. While there, my Aunt introduced me to Michael Cone, a classical guitar builder and inventor. He was kind enough to welcome me into his shop in Maui where he, my Dad and I talked all things guitar for the whole afternoon. He recommended that I try using Machiche for my backs and sides. When I mentioned this to Navashen, he told me to go for it, and go for it I did.

I decided to go with a Sitka Spruce spruce top to compliment the Machiche back and sides, a Spanish Cedar neck, Indian Rosewood fingerboard, bridge and pins, a 24.625″ scale, bone nut and saddle, and a nitro cellulose finish. For the icing on the cake he had me install a K and K FanTaStick Undersaddle Transducer pickup and to keep the guitar good and safe, a Mono M80 case. Both companies for which I am a dealer, if you happen to be in the market for an awesome sounding acoustic pickup or one of the most well made and conveniently designed cases out there.

I Love the way this guitar sounds. Rich, full, sparkling highs and full of body. I will definitely be using this wood combination again in the future. I think the only things I would like to switch up would to make the body a little bit deeper and try out Macassar Ebony for the fingerboard and bridge; although for this guitar, knowing who it was going to and what it was being used for, it was perfect.

Prashad is a really cool dude, a great singer, wonderful harpist, and a grand guitarist to boot. Prashad and I live in the same community in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California. We play a lot of music around here, mostly involving Indian/Western Hindu chants and bhajans and many choir pieces that involve guitar as an accompaniment. When he asked me to build him a guitar I was first, thrilled and honored to be asked, and second, I knew very well the musical stylings that were going to be played through it.

There were only a few guidelines from Prashad, more like requests. Prashad isn’t a big dude, and normal sized guitars can be quite fatiguing after a while. “How can we make this guitar easier to play?” was the question at hand.

So we did three things, the first was give it a smaller a smaller body size, an OM. He was used to dreadnoughts so this was an obvious choice. The second was to use a smaller scale, 24.625. And last but not least, we decided to make the neck join the body at the 12th fret, bringing everything that much closer. Oh wait a tic, there is a fourth thing. The nut width we narrowed as well, to 1 5/8.

For the kind of music we all play around here, I have always felt that an OM is the most appropriate, great for fingerpicking and accompanying choirs and it holds it’s clarity in a big kirtan setting when being played along with harmoniums, drums, cymbals, tampuras and large groups of people singing along. The key was to make sure clarity was mixed with warmth and richness, so for the wood selection we went with wenge for the back and sides and cedar for the top. The neck is mahogany and the fingerboard and the bridge are macassar ebony. I really enjoyed this wood pairing, a lot. They all go together very well in a way I would describe as, “Yummy”. Macassar ebony I have been using a lot lately for fingerboards and is becoming one of my favorites. It’s fun to work with, it’s looks are absolutely stunning and to my ears, sounds amazing.

There a number of firsts for me on this guitar, as there tends to be. This was the first OM I’ve had the pleasure of making. It was also the first time using wenge and cedar. This will definitely NOT be the last time those three ingredients go together. This was also the first time making a pinless bridge. I really like the idea of using a pinless bridge. Something about not drilling holes through the top seems to make sense to me. I am mostly happy with the way the bridge came out. It works just fine, it’s just not as easy to install and remove the strings. It’s not hard or anything, but some refining will be needed for future pinless endeavors.

The finish on this guitar is also my time using a water based lacquer, KTM9 used along with Aqua Coat’s pore filler. As of the writing of this I have finished one more guitar with both of these as material choices and my opinions are mixed. The Aqua Coat pore filler is super easy to use but it took an insane number of coats to fill in all the pores. That was really irritating. And as far as the KTM9 goes, it seems like a really nice finish. It shines to a beautiful high gloss and doesn’t add any unwanted tints. I still have a bit to figure out with how to apply the finish; I seem to be using much more than others claim to use. My spray gun is rather old though so maybe that’s it. It couldn’t be user error now could it?…. The next guitar I plan on using KTM9 on I think I will try an epoxy pore filler. It seems like a hassle too but a one coat hassle. A friend of mine also has a much newer spray system that he said I can barrow so we’ll see what happens there.

After all was said and done I put in a B Band pickup under the saddle, and zipped it into it’s new Mono case, which I totally dig, and handed it off to it’s new owner. It was great fun building it, and as always, it was an honor to be a part of it.

SPECS

-12 fret OM

-24.625 scale

-1 5/8 nut width

-12 inch fingerboard radius

-20 frets

-Wenge back and sides

-Cedar top

-Mahogany neck

-Macassar ebony fingerboard and bridge

-Walnut binding

-Water based lacquer finish