The Olson line

Jim Olson builds alone in Circle Pines, Minnesota — maker of the SJ that James Taylor made famous, and by his own account a builder who has occasionally had a helper but prefers to perform every aspect of construction himself. That solitude gives the line its shape: it has passed, in any sustained way, to one person. Drew Heinonen met Olson in 2011 at a jig, fixture, and tooling seminar at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais; months later Olson invited him into the shop, and Heinonen worked the 2012 and 2013 model years at his side, from layout through the final setting of strings — more than eighty guitars together. Olson's own account is characteristically plain: he was "very pleased to have him work at my side as a helper for two seasons." Heinonen had already spent four and a half years at Bourgeois Guitars as a binding and body specialist with a hand in some 1,500 instruments, which makes him a rare double lineage — the Atlas charts the other half under the Bourgeois line. He builds today in Grand Marais, an SJ among his models. The shop's quiet reach runs a little wider than its one bench guest: Bill Wise of Charis Acoustic dates the inspiration for his fingerstyle small jumbos to "a quick visit to Jim Olson's shop." The line is short on purpose — and that is the story.