This extremely early product of a very young Bourgeois Guitar Company is 15 ½” wide (that’s half an inch wider than a 000/OM, and 4 11/16th” deep (a 000/OM is 4” deep). Consequently, its sound is delightfully rich, yet crispy clear and clean, and, as well, louder, stronger and with greater projection than what you might be used to. As they say about a towering Trenta – that’s a tall order to fill. But Bourgeois fills it with dashing elegance and a colorful plume of feathers (no actual feathers are provided with this purchase, you’ll need to supply your own).
Here’s what the Bourgeois Guitars says about this model (slightly edited): JOM stands for Jumbo OM. The JOM is an original body style developed by Dana in the late 80's, in response to players' requests for a mid-sized guitar having the balance and clarity of an OM--but with a bigger presence. The idea was simple: Start with the OM outline, enlarge it a bit, play around with the curves and deepen the sides. The result is a wonderfully versatile guitar; larger than an OM, smaller than a Dreadnought, capable of handling almost any playing style you can imagine, and equally capable of operating in solo or ensemble situations.
If you need one guitar to convincingly cut a variety of styles -- on stage, in the studio, or just around the house -- it's hard to think of a more useful guitar than this standard JOM. Go ahead - take advantage of the JOM's versatility: in the hands of a skilled musician a JOM can be a killer flatpicking guitar (and it's a lot easier for some people to get their hands around than a Dreadnought), a woody, sustaining Celtic player's dream, or if you need a flattop guitar that can punch out swing rhythm and fat melody, it's hard to beat a JOM.
To deliver a vintage look, Bourgeois Guitars selects only the highest grades of woods, perfectly matched and quartered with tight, straight grain and memorable color. To round out the visual package, this JOM also features rosewood body bindings, a rounded top, slightly snakehead style headstock design glowing with pride to have a “Bourgeois” inlaid logo in multi-colored pearl; the headplate is matte finish East Indian rosewood and the truss rod cover is a lighter shade of matte finished rosewood, held in place by one screw. The East Indian rosewood 14-frets to the body fingerboard is beautifully grained and inlaid with 8 mother of pearl dotmarkers in 7 positions. The nut width is 1 ¾” and the strings spacing at the carved rosewood bridge is 2 3/16th”. The soundhole is ringed with three concentric circles of multi-ply purfling and the teardrop shaped pickguard is tortoise shell color plastic. Its tuners are unbranded Kluson Deluxe replicas with small metal buttons; its backstripe is multi-colored wood parquetry forming arrows, in a southwestern repeating motif. Although the condition is solidly excellent the guitar shows only the lightest normal signs of use from having been owned. The worst thing we can say about it is to point out that visible ding on the top in the lower section near the bottom side.
The Sitka spruce top on this guitar is lightly aging tonered, and the mahogany on the back and sides (true actual mahogany by the way) is golden and gleaming with manic resplendence. The guitar has a bone nut and saddle, a one-piece mahogany neck, a satin finish on all planes, and a “long” scale length of 25.4”nut to saddle. This is a guitar for a player/performer – it does everything any of us who “tickle the nickel” nightly could ever ask for in sound, feel, projection – a panoply of prodigious plectral poetry. Try it, you’ll love it.