August of '07 we made the Pilgrimage. We drove across country from Vermont to Montana to see the kids, and cut up through Michigan just to go to Elderly Instruments in Lansing. (We went on up and crossed Lake Michigan on the Badger, the old ferryboat, thus both avoiding Chicago and avoiding going into Canada while transporting some ammo and such for the kids. Which latter Would Not Have Been Good.)

I was hoping to try one of the smaller CAs but they didn't have the full-depth body model in stock. They did have a Rainsong OM-1000. I had played an early one 7 or 8 years previous and was unimpressed. But I took this one down and tried it. In a couple of minutes Kris saw that look in my eye and sighed. An hour later (mostly spent playing that guitar) I had the credit card out on the counter.

Over the last 15 months I've played it about 95% of the time when I've played anywhere outside my own house. It doesn't have the best sound of any guitar I own - the Collings 000-2H and the Proulx OM/D are certainly superior in tone - but it has an excellent tone, great power for the 000/O.M. size, and I don't have to worry about it. I can carry it in a gigbag and save my back, although I've always used a hard case for instruments of substantial value. I can leave it out on a hanger in extremes of weather, from hot, muggy summer days to the dead of winter when the humidity in the house drops to dangerous levels for wood instruments in spite of humidifiers running everywhere.

At flatpick Kamp last summer, I was playing in the evening on the front steps of one of the dorms, when I stepped back and the back of the lower bout, treble side, whacked into the cast-iron knob at the top of the post at the bottom of the stair rail, hard enough to put a substantial crack in the back of a solid wood instrument. There was a boom like a giant bronze gong being beaten in a cave. I panicked and looked the guitar all over. Nothing. Not even a mark on the finish.

I would strongly recommend the present all-graphite Rainsongs for anyone who plays out and has to haul the instrument around a lot, and play it in less then ideal conditions.

Peter.