Ervin Somogyi: Guitar Models

Guitars < Guitar Models < The OO Model

The historic trend in guitars has been to make them ever larger and the OO guitar occupies a position between its smaller predecessor, the O model, and its larger successor, the OOO. OO guitars were private instruments for private performance, usually in the parlors of middle-class homes; accordingly they became known as parlor guitars. These have a sweet, musical voice that’s lovely for a normal-sized room but poorly adapted for large-scale public performance. When Joan Baez was mesmerizing crowds in the 1960s with her voice and her parlor guitar, she of course played into microphones.