This 2017 Buendia OMC is practically new, and practically heaven. Leo’s supply of Brazilian Rosewood must have some pretty dramatic players, see exhibit A: #026 with brick-red hues and wild figure toward the edges of the lower bout. Tight-grained German Spruce on top with an Ebony-and-Burl rosette. Trimmed out in Ebony with Maple purflings, Florentine Cutaway, and Gotoh 510 cosmo black tuners—this guitar wins the beauty pageant every time. Take it across the hall to the music contest, and it’ll take first place there too.

Leo’s bass response has a smooth, rolling flavor, and pairs well with the other registers. This is a fingerstyle guitar through and through. The setup lets you dig in as needed, but even a delicate attack renders great projection and sustain. There are enough overtones in the treble strings alone to fill the sonic space, but there’s enough body in the guitar’s fundamental response that the overtones decorate, rather than dominate, the voice. It’s like even flubbed notes sound good.

Our Buendias are selling faster than Leo can make them; snag this one now while you still can.

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If Leo Buendia is the future, then this guitar is the first step along a reverent, beautiful road. His 2016 OM Cutaway is fresh from the bench and arrived like most guitars do: wrapped in layer upon layer of cardboard. When we cut away the tape and the packing foam, we found one of the most beautiful, resonant guitars this shop has ever seen cocooned in a black-and-gold Hoffee hardshell case. We all agreed that this guitar was special–Leo’s work is astounding–but the instant Paul put finger to string, we knew something was different. The air is charged with a mesmerizing force: the bass string trembles; the German Spruce top shimmers in the light, its voice balanced as a dancer on the ball of her foot. Brazilian Rosewood from a luthier’s daydream has here been shaped into a creature whose richness is crushed purple velvet, and that hardly begins to encapsulate the depth and range of Buendia’s OM Cutaway model. The low-end is comprehensive, absorbing, respectfully balanced with the other registers, so the trebles can ring clean and strong. This instrument speaks through you, rather than the other way around, and the fit and finish are actually flawless–from Maple purfling miters to silky Nitrocellulose Lacquer. This guitar is what every fingerstylist is searching for, with its pianistic separation, resounding depths, and its ability to fill a room with myriad tones, each of them jewels.