Mar 10, 2008 8:14 am US/Central
Finding Minnesota: Jim Olson's Guitar Shop
(WCCO)
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Guitar maker Jim Olson's client list is impressive, ranging from Sting and Paul McCartney to David Crosby and Graham Nash, but there's really one musical legend that Olson credits for his years of success: James Taylor.
Jim Olson has come a long, long way since his early years making guitars in a church basement.
It was 1977 and he was doing maintenance work for a St. Paul church, in exchange for workshop space.
"Times were so hard, you couldn't seem to give guitars away in the early years," said Olson.
Much has changed over the past 30 years. Now customers worldwide will put their names on a year long waiting list just to get their hands on his acoustical creations -- finger style guitars that boast a delicate and balanced sound.
"That's kind of what I got known for, basically from the players who started playing and that was they're style of music. I kind of refined that," he said.
His client list is impressive, ranging from Sting and Paul McCartney to David Crosby and Graham Nash, but there's really one musical legend that Olson credits for his years of success.
"The most visible probably is James Taylor. In 1989, he found out about my guitars and has been playing them pretty exclusively ever since," Olson said proudly.
In fact, the two have developed such a friendship that the Circle Pines, Minn. guitar maker offers a special "James Taylor Model" to his customers.
Olson builds his custom guitars from unique woods that come from all over the world. He makes visits to places such as Africa, South America and Asia to select only the best possible woods for his guitars.
While he's made guitars from woods like Zebrawood and Honduran Mahogany, he says most customers still want the natural beauty of Rosewood, especially Brazilian Rosewood, which was logged to the point of extinction. Much of it was used to panel the world's elevator cars.
The beautiful reddish black wood is nearly impossible to find and tougher yet to export. According to Olson, lumber suppliers are resorting to recycling Rosewood from old warehouse beams. Some have found a market for sawing up the four-foot stumps that were left behind during initial logging.
Once he selects the woods used in his guitars, the work of bending and shaping the guitar's body and neck is tedious and slow. What power tools he uses basically run on molds, jigs and machines he's designed himself, but his collective 30 years in the business has refined the process with perfection.
Despite the countless hours of precisely crafting the guitar's different parts, Olson admitted "finishing is the hardest part to get correct."
He sprays up to six coats of clear finish onto the guitars, carefully sanding between each coat. The guitars are then placed in a special oven that uses light to cure the finish into a durable luster.
The final product could be considered among the world's most beautiful acoustic guitars, topped only by the sweetly delicate sounds that resonate when talented fingers finally touch the strings.
"I get lost in the work, and it's what I love doing," said the local craftsman.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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