The Bourgeois line

Before Bourgeois Guitars was a Lewiston, Maine institution, Dana Bourgeois was hand-voicing the OM revival: in partnership with fingerstyle artist and OM advocate Eric Schoenberg he built vintage-inspired, modern versions of the Martin OM-18s and OM-28s made only between 1929 and 1933, voicing each Schoenberg Soloist by hand at Martin's Nazareth workshop from the line's 1987 debut until he left the partnership around 1990. That ear — for the individual top, tuned before the box is closed — is what the Bourgeois line passes down. John Slobod of Circa apprenticed under Dana and performed the final voicing on nearly 4,000 Bourgeois guitars before opening his own bench in South Portland; his pre-war Martin replicas make him the line's natural bridge into that style tradition. T. Drew Heinonen spent four and a half years at Bourgeois, then two more building some eighty guitars alongside Jim Olson — a rare double lineage that shows in flat-tops spanning Bourgeois projection and Olson fingerstyle responsiveness. Lars Rasmussen served his apprenticeship under Dana before further study with Ervin Somogyi, carrying the line to southern Sweden. Bourgeois Guitars itself continues in Lewiston, building within the Eastman family of companies.