Here we have a 2002 Somogyi OM in Brazilian Rosewood and Adirondack (Red) Spruce. This is one of the stronget Somogyi guitars we have played, the voice is full on open and powerful! The trademark Somogyi bass is well represented here and it is loud, the mids through the trebles are as usual warm and fat, perfectly complimenting the divine bass. Ervins aesthetic is as good as it gets, with his sculpted bridge, segmented rosette and delicate headstock design, there is as much to love about the looks as there is the sound. This guitar is blissful.

If you haven’t had the chance to hold and play a Somogyi Jumbo, you really need to do yourself a favor and make friends with someone who has one. Ervin has earned his reputation as a master craftsman over decades, starting with his work making instruments for Windham Hill and continuing through to our present day. His guitars have garnered worldwide renown and Ervin continues to further his name by training some of the finest luthiers alive on our planet today.

Meticulously crafted, the supremely figured Quilted Maple and straight, strong European Spruce pair to make a Jumbo with ideal balance to the voice. This refined instrument has an air of history about it, a classic European style body with a beautifully framed, Japanese aesthetic that lets the wood do all the talking. It is at once an art piece to be appreciated from afar and an approachable, appreciable, living, breathing work of art. A guitar that once played will not soon be forgotten.

This Somogyi has one of the most amazing sets of Brazilian we’ve seen from Ervin. The figure is almost like a stack of feathers and the color is deep and rich. It’s topped with European Spruce and dressed in Ervin’s famous segmented rosette and linear abalone fingerboard inlays. The voice is huge and can morph to handle a wide variety of styles. While writing this we played fingerstyle, single line Jazz and flatpick tunes and they all sounded right at home. The big, juicy treble strings make melodies jump across the room and the bass is much bigger than you expect from an OM. The midrange is rich and complex but very articulate with a clear fundamental note. A masterpiece from the Somogyi shop.

This is a custom Somogyi that Ervin actually built for himself. It incorporates his multiple X-braced back and is voice for the utmost response. This guitar is alive! The tone is full of character, all the rich low-end that Somogyi is famous for and big, fat trebles that we love. The artistic touches are unique and this guitar comes with a letter from Ervin about the aesthetic. The Brazilian Rosewood is simply amazing and the Spruce top is voiced to perfection. Don’t miss a rare opportunity to obtain a Somogyi that Ervin built for himself.

Ervin Somogyi somehow creates instruments that are magical. They possess intangible qualities that make them more than instruments, they are musical partners that inspire you to find your voice. This OMC is crafted from lovely quartersawn Brazilian and European Spruce with stunning details. The bass is big and open and the trebles have that piano quality to them, great separation and clarity. This one also has several unique features including a bordered fingerboard and linear lines inlay, a ribbon perfling and laminated and scalloped nut. Somogyis are something all together different and extremely special.

In what ways will the guitar’s sound change, given a different species of wood for the soundboard? Faced with one of the oldest questions in the business, Ervin Somogyi embarked on a project to build three guitars for a client in an attempt to answer that landmark question. In order to isolate the different tonal properties of Sitka Spruce, European Spruce, and Cedar, Ervin controlled for the other variables by using matching Brazilian Rosewood sets which were sequentially flitch cut from the same log, and using the same neck dimensions and scale length.

Once built, Ervin knew that a musician of a certain calibre would need to bend their ears to The Trinity in order to best glean the differences, if such they were, or their similiarities. Enter: Michael Chapdelaine, the only guitarist to win first place in GFA International Classical Guitar Competition and the National Fingerstyle Championship. Chapdelaine was so enthused by the prospect that he recorded a series of videos and an entire album worth of material highlighting the nuances of The Trinity, titled The Somogyi Incident (but there’s nothing incidental about the rigors of this project).

The Cedar OM, #455, was predictably the warmest of the three, but in addition to that warmth the bass and middle registers had a dark tinge that seemed to color the overall tone with a brooding, emotive force. Not as loud as the other two, #455 nevertheless had an easy projection and sustain. The treble overtones in particular were fat and lingering. The Sitka Spruce OM (#457) was drier than we expected, and that also meant that the bass response had an aggressive bark. The trebles cut very well, and boy would the Sitka top howl if you dug in with a heavier attack! Lastly, the European Spruce OM (#456) also featured a dry tone, but this one erred more on the side of breathy and mellow. While quieter overall when compared to #457, the European Spruce OM offered the best note separation of the three, and we found that the string-to-string balance was the best for fingerstyle arrangements in lowered tunings. The bass response was more focused and defined than the other OMs as well.

The Trinity, The Somogyi Incident, and our own videos stand as a unique opportunity to observe firsthand the particulars of these time-tested tonewoods from one of the world’s finest luthiers. Alas, the Sitka and European Spruce OMs have already found new homes! But the Cedar is still available.