When Sawyer arrived at The Music Emporium in Lexington, MA, on March 29th, he thought it was to meet the luthier, Dana Bourgeois, who handcrafted his signature Ray LaMontagne Bourgeois guitar that he has played since his time on the Voice. He was in for a surprise, though. Dana brought out a guitar for him to see, but it wasn’t just any guitar. It was custom-made just for him, an early birthday present from “an ardent fan,” as Dana called her. Commissioned by fan Jacqui Etschmaier on behalf of the entire Team Sawyer fan base, Sawyer’s new Bourgeois OMSC guitar (their “richest-sounding”) took three months to craft. We asked Ryan Fitzsimmons, Online Marketing Manager for Bourgeois Guitars, to give us some more information on how the guitar was custom made for Sawyer. He said:
“Sawyer frequently tunes his guitar down a step, so we recommended a 12 fret guitar with a 25.5” scale length to accentuate the lower bass response this leads to. The OMSC is ideal for this because while being a 12-fret guitar (optimal for tone), the cutaway allows access to the entire fretboard (optimal for playing). Because he’ll be maintaining a busy touring schedule, we built this special guitar with a solid headstock to make string-changing easier—typically these guitars come with a slotted headstock. Sawyer liked the smooth feel of the tuners on one of his older instruments, so we custom ordered Schaller GrandTune tuning machines from Germany, which have the classic look and functionality of traditional tuners, but with a higher gear ratio for a smoother feel. Dana Bourgeois set up the guitar to handle Sawyer’s lower tunings in the most optimal way. Also, this guitar has very premium tonewoods. The Adirondack Top has been torrefied (thermally treated), and this makes it sound more like a vintage instrument. The back and sides are Madagascar Rosewood, one of the finest tonewoods available to achieve the rich, full response that would complement Sawyer’s fingerstyle playing.”
“Blown away,” tweeted Sawyer on March 30th, as he recounted the day. “Such an amazing guitar. Thank you Bourgeois Guitars, Jacqui, and Team Sawyer…. It’s beyond beautiful.”
Here is a video of Sawyer playing his guitar for the first time: