Atkin Essential OM Acoustic Guitar with Baked Sitka Spruce and Mahogany

Spec Card for Atkin Essential OM Acoustic Guitar with Baked Sitka Spruce and Mahogany

Case for Atkin Essential OM Acoustic Guitar with Baked Sitka Spruce and Mahogany

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The Atkin Essential OM in Baked Sitka Spruce and Mahogany is a beautifully direct, responsive, and wide awake instrument that captures everything players love about a great orchestra model. Built under the guidance of founder Alister Atkin and crafted by his small team of talented luthiers, this guitar carries the handmade character, vintage inspiration, and purposeful simplicity that have made Atkin such a beloved name among players who know what a great acoustic should feel like.

The formula here is classic for a reason. A Baked Sitka Spruce top gives this OM an immediate, opened up voice, while the Mahogany back and sides bring focus, warmth, clarity, and a strong fundamental note. It has that dry, quick response that feels instantly familiar, with notes that seem to jump out of the box the moment your hand touches the strings. There is a beautiful balance across the entire register, from the warm and articulate lows to the strong midrange and clean, singing trebles.

Where the dreadnought version delivers horsepower in a broad shouldered, hard charging way, this Essential OM gives you power with precision. It has excellent headroom for a smaller bodied guitar, allowing you to lean in without the voice collapsing or getting cloudy. Strummed chords have real body and authority, flatpicked lines stay clear and punchy, and fingerpicked passages bloom with a lively, musical complexity. It is muscular without being bulky, refined without being delicate, and dynamic enough to follow every change in your right hand.

A major part of that voice comes from Atkin’s prewar inspired construction. The Baked Red Spruce scalloped bracing helps the top move with speed and freedom, giving the guitar excellent projection, openness, and touch sensitivity. The Age Toned Relic Gloss Nitrocellulose finish adds the feel of a well loved old instrument, giving the guitar a broken in personality before you ever play the first chord. Visually, the Essential OM keeps things clean, timeless, and tasteful, with tortoise shell binding, black/white/black purfling and rosette, an ebony backstrip, ebony headstock overlay, and the classic Atkin decal logo.

The playing experience is equally thoughtful. The Mahogany neck is paired with an ebony fingerboard, mother of pearl dot fret markers, white celluloid side dots, and a comfortable 16 inch fingerboard radius. The 25.4 inch scale length gives the guitar snap, clarity, and drive, while the 1.77 inch nut width offers excellent room for fingerstyle playing without feeling oversized for flatpicking or strumming. Bone is used for both the nut and saddle, and nickel Gotoh tuners provide smooth, reliable tuning stability. A two way truss rod with soundhole adjustment makes setup access simple and practical.

With a 20 inch body length, 4 1/8 inch body depth, 15 inch lower bout width, and 40 1/4 inch total length, this Essential OM has a wonderfully comfortable feel while still producing a full and confident voice. At just 3 lb 14 oz, it feels alive in the hands, light on the lap, and incredibly responsive under the fingers. It comes housed in an Atkin Black case.

This is the kind of OM that does not need decoration to make its point. The Atkin Essential OM is open, dry, powerful, and deeply musical, with the clarity and balance that make an orchestra model so versatile and the extra push that makes it feel like far more than a polite fingerstyle guitar. It is a true working musician’s instrument, built with taste, confidence, and plenty of soul.

Other specifications of the Essential OM include: