Ian's Story

My "Sands" story starts in July 2016 at my annual summer guitar bash, which is always held on the third Saturday in July. Regular attendees have become good friends over the years and, in July 2016, my mate Adam rolled up with a couple of amazing guitars he'd commissioned from Tom. We were all pretty blown away with the instruments and some decided to pull the trigger immediately. By the time I got around to doing anything about it, Tom's build list, as an apprentice to Ervin Somogyi, was closed. However, he did have a couple of OM's that were partially built which he could offer me. I chose the fiddle back mahogany OM...

The guitar was delivered personally by Tom early in July this year (2017). On Adam's advice, I sourced a really great bottle of Scotch to celebrate. The guitar is wonderful (so was the Scotch). Frankly it has to be, since it lives in a room full of world class instruments. In a way, I am glad that I did not have much input into the actual build of this guitar, as I am extremely happy with all aspects of it and certainly would not have had the imagination necessary to suggest using Japanese Washi paper both in the rosette and headstock design. Ultimately, of course, it's all about the sound. As a player I am always looking for an instrument that is responsive, balanced across the strings and fretboard and capable of dealing with the tunings that I use which, typically, are a mixture of C and G based tunings. My Sands OM copes perfectly. Indeed the video recorded with it by Will McNicol is in a C major seventh tuning which gives you a great insight into the instrument's capabilities (as well as Will's!).

So to conclude and, in essence and distillation, if you haven't got one of Tom's guitars, you probably need one...