Dear Bill,
I hope things are going well in Nashville and here's what I'll say about the Bourgeois JOM English Walnut/Redwood guitar:
1) Very full rich sound. Each tone is exact and clear, Sounds good with the voice and a choir. A capo does not alter the fulness of the sound. Intonation is great up the neck.
2) Easy for me to hold, not too heavy. The guitar plays you, I have gone in directions that were not on my mind with songs that I have played many times.
Wonderful for fingerstyle, good for strumming (more OM here than Jumbo for strumming), rich low end, clear precise highs. balanced mids. The width of the neck really surprised me. I found it more comfortable than anything I'd ever played.
Please note that a seasoned player would probably play a Bourgeois first to determine the playability of the neck, this was not so available for me, especially living in Germany (but I think the risk was worth it). What German music stores stock is another story.
3) Two color design, front-red/brown back tan/walnut colors. Very artistic, playable and inexpensive for what you get (I would have had to pay $1000-1500 more for the same basic requirements if I had gone to 3 other companies for the wood choice-tuners-nut/saddle/endpins).
4) Dana's price may have gone up or is going up someday, but I feel that even if it does go up this instrument looks like a $5500-6000 guitar compared to the $4,500 price I paid. I guess walnut is considered a lesser expensive tonewood, I think it is just not as much in demand as some others say, the rosewoods (not considering Brazilian there).
5) Dana really surprised me with what the Walnut looked like, Amazing to look at and listen to English Walnut.
6) I recommend this as an instrument you may want to sell in your store (providing you order up another from Dana that is). You may want to try it with an Englemann spruce or if it becomes available from Dana, the Cedar top.
7) The K+K pure western is a great pick-up system. I appreciate the added volume and equalization controls. It recreates the guitar's natural sound very precisely, of course a good acoustic guitar amp would be a requisite there. I think the magnet that holds the controls in place is innovative, since i didn't feel the weight of it before it was installed, I'm not sure how much weight that added to the guitar (no complaint meant there).
The only thing, you have to take a string or two off (maybe all of them actually) to change the battery-whch is supposed to have a good long life. This system to me is better than the prefix plus and Taylor expression systems (please note that the K+K is amplifying a Bourgeois-I can only imagine what a K+K sounds like in another guitar-that maybe best left for the future sometime).
Enjoying my new tones - "Known for pure tone, played for pure pleasure" the guitar really lives up to the words (from their ad),
Matt West / Bann Germany