The Essential OM offers 100% Atkin tone – stripped down to the bare essentials! Each Essential OM sports a North American Sitka spruce top and braced with pre-war scalloped bracing, all of which is baked in house here at Atkin. Mahogany back and sides are complimented by a lightweight mahogany neck with an ebony fingerboard
The OM, or “Orchestra Model” combines a full scale length with a slightly scaled down body – it is narrower and shallower than a “D” style guitar like our White Rice or Essential D. The challenge for all OM builders is to allow for a rich, commanding bass in spite of the smaller, more ergonomic body, and our hand-scalloped bracing and torrified select Sitka top allows us to make this a reality.
This isn’t a slavish vintage copy though: We’ve departed in several ways from the classic pre-war style: A larger top dome, our lifetime-guaranteed neck/body joint, and a two-way truss rod are among the changes, so this isn’t a historical reproduction, but a modern British-made guitar with heaps of mojo!
We thank the folks at Atkins for this excellent description!
Basic specs on this guitar: Nut width is 1-11/16"; Long Scale at 25.4"; comes with a quality Atkin branded hard case.
Be sure to check out the demonstration video of this guitar in the photo array, courtesy of our good friend Doug Yeomans!
