Olympia OP-2

Made in China, 18 frets, laminate. Just a bear bones little guitar.Cheap machineheads.

It is a nice bluesy sounding guitar. Not enough bass for my taste but very good for a low end guitar.

Finish is that cheap satin that everyone is going to. The action is surprisingly nice. The bridge is the only dress up part of the guitar.

This guitar is a little tank. Perfect camping guitar or travel.

Replaced the machineheads with Schallers. Overkill for a low end guitar but makes a big differance. Also replaced the plastic bridge pins with rosewood pins. She's my baby for when I'm on the couch or traveling. Never will see a studio but that's not her purpose. NLG(Nice Little Guitar)

Made in Indonesia not sure how old. Short scale guitar no electronics. Got this at a garage sale for $10. All plywood Mahogany ply sides and back and ply spruce. Parlor size body and got a gig bag in the deal. Bag is unpadded but you could use this for a jack stand if you had a flat. Tuners are ??? I thought I would replace them but took the covers off and greased them with bicycle grease (Phil Wood) they work fine. Bound fretboard and body some kind of plastic also has a rosewood bridge. I replaced the saddle and pins with bone and ebony - helped a lot.

Real country blues sound. Ain't ever going to get any better. Nice sustain kind of surprised me. Gave it an 8. This is not a Huss & Dalton but for what I paid I think it is fine.

Nice set up when I got it but I put on a bone nut and adjusted the action for me. I polished the guitar with Flitz. It looked like it had been in that garage for years. Looks pretty nice now.

This is not a gig guitar. I got it to not worry about it in the truck or on my bicycle. I don't think anything can hurt it but with $10 in it and about the same for saddle and pins - why worry? I don't think you can wear the finish off this puppy. Looks industrial.

No experience.

5 years playing. I looked at a lot of lightweight small guitars. Probably would have been better new but pretty good deal. A real knock around guitar.

The Olympia OP-2 is a no frills, basic, travel size guitar. Mine is made in China. It has 18 frets total with 12 frets where the neck meets the body. It is made from mahogany laminate for the back & sides. The top is laminated spruce. The tuners are chrome and look to be generic Gotoh style tuners. The neck appears to be nato mahogany and is made from three pieces of wood. The neck on this particular guitar measures 1 11/16th at the nut and the scale is 21 1/2 in length. It has black (plastic?) binding around the top & back and the same material around the fretboard. There are 5 perloid fret markers. The fretboard appears to be made from some type of hardwood stained to look like rosewood. There are 3 b/w inlaid rossette rings around the soundhole. The bridge pins are black plastic and the nut & saddle appear to be white plastic. The bridge appears to be made from either striped ebony or rosewood and is the same shape as the USA Tacoma line. The finish is satin.

The sound that eminates from this guitar is on the bright side with a hint of bass response. It has good sustain and ringing characteristics. A better set of strings, ebony bridge pins, and bone or tusq nut & saddle would improve the sound, but what do you expect for $99.00. The notes ring true and it stays in tune.

This particular guitar has no detectable flaws and the fit & finish are excellent. The frets were smooth and not sharp at the ends. The action was good out of the box and it is easy & comfortable to play. This guitar has some weight to it and should hold up under most circumstances. The quality of the laminated woods is very good.

This guitar is more for at home playing or practicing. It is not meant for live performance. With normal care & maintenance it should hold up as it is well built and has some heft to it. It is a reliable guitar in my opinion.

N/A - I haven't had to contact Tacoma about this guitar yet.

I own a Taylor Baby, Martin LXM, and Backpacker. I would have to say that the OP-2 is definitly better than the Backpacker, but slightly below the quality of the Baby or LXM which cost around $300.00 versus the OP-2's $99.00. For an inexpensive travel guitar the OP-2 has very few equals in this price class. I am pleased with mine, but when buying one compare several and choose the best one. If it was lost or stolen I would probably buy another one as it is cheaper to replace than a missing Baby or LXM.

This is not a frilly guitar. Basically laminated wood, strings, and tuners.

In all honesty, I think you have to make allowances for the OP2's sound. It does not sound muted or frilly, but it has the smaller sound you would expect. No one will ever believe this would be your regular guitar. That said, I picked it up for shoving in plane overhead space. I'm willing to make allowances. As time transpires, I find that its sound makes me sound more bluesy than I thought my playing could ever sound...so that was a worthwhile discovery. It sounds good for its size.

This guitar looks like an inexpensive guitar (the less charitable may say it crosses over to cheap). I own an Olympia OD 10s (which is a Dreadnaught), and it looks as though better materials went into it (it cost at least 2 times as much, so it should). I agree that the tuners look cheap, but they are functional. The action is okay for $99 guitar. The assembly seems quite good. No misalignments or glue beads or gaps that I can see.

This is not a gig guitar. Other than that, I bought it to withstand a lot of abuse. On its first plane ride some inconsiderate passenger crammed his oversized piece of luggage against my guitar...the guitar had no damage. I do not plan to repeat this experiment, but I wanted a guitar that could take abuse...and it already has.

Have not had to use Olympia's customer support

This is turning out to be a good travel guitar. I have been playing for a little over a year. Mostly folksy stuff, fingerpicking, and the like. The little nieces and nephews like singing with it, so it was worth the price. It is a lot better than nothing while on the road (but I was glad to come home to my regular sized guitar). If it were crunched or stolen, I'd replace it with something similar, though maybe not this exact guitar...I like to experiment.

Indonesian made With stamped tuners, laminated top, sides and back. Nice feeling mahogany neck, rosewood fretboard, tuners stay in tune. I bought this guitar for a nock around beater. Would like to have got a Larrivee parlor, but $500 is a lot if the poor thing gets crushed when your camping. I could live with a $100 loss. My main search was for a 3/4 guitar under $200 that sounds good.

I've been playing for 4 years. A little bluegrass, kids songs, folk and country blues. This little guy seems to be able to play all types well. I would really have liked it to have a 1 3/4 nut on it. It would make it easier to play for students as well as kids(me to). The sound that this puts out is not great but good, its acurate, great when you use a metal slide. Look and play as many of these as possible. I found 1 out of 6 that sounded good, though they all looked the same.

Could find no flaws on the exterior, A little to much glue in some spots inside(trimmed off with a razor blade) The action was poor, the nut way to high, saddle way to high with shims underneath. I made a new bone saddle, filed nut slots and replaced the plastic bridge pins with ebony ones ($13 total) adjusted and lubed the truss rod. This made all the difference in the world. I played 6 of these things as well as the litte yamaha and AMI all of them had the same action issues. But then again its a $100 guitar, The crappy plastic saddle kills them all in my opinion.

Very durable laminated guitar,it seems to be very solid. I don't think the sound quality is good enough for preforming solo (for $$$) but if you were hacking out cords with other instruments/musicians, it would be just fine. I took it camping a couple of times were the temp rose above 100. Nothing changed with the frets and the thing stayed in tune ( thought for sure the frets would pop out at that temp)

E-mailed them about the saddle issue and to afirm the tuning is standard. They did'nt seem to care about the saddle & bridge pins. They gave the standard line about how it met quality specs, ect....

Been playing for 4 years own a acoustic and electric. Just wish this thing had a 1 3/4 nut. I love the 3/4 size and durability of this thing. I looked at a lot of little 3/4 guitars before buying this Yamaha, Dean, AMI, Cort, Washburn, Ibanez. In my opinion for a $100 this was the best value, but if you want great sound look at the baby Taylor or Larrivee parlor, of course they are solid wood rigs and cost more but if a inexpensive alternative is what your looking for this is it, in my opinion

My OP-2 was made in Indonesia and I must say it is a rather nice job with no visable flaws. The bridge is rosewood on mine as is the fret board (stained black)according to Olympia Customer Service. I tried 3 different OP-2's before setting on the one that had the most acoustic output. The guitar is designed to be tuned to standard pitch and not "A" as some have indicate. I verified this with Olymipa Customer Service. The tuners on mine seem fine, however, on one of the OP-2's I tried some of the tuners felt stiff. The neck has a truss rod and is adjustable through the sound hole. The wrench is included as are instructions about adjusting the neck.

I wanted a small guitar to sit and play on the couch while watching TV, or for taking camping. The small body allows me to play it for hours without my neck complaining from having to keep my right arm elevated around a large acoustic body. The sound is good and much like a larger acoustic, however one I tried sounded rather boxy, so try several before deciding. I was a little unhappy with the chord tones in the root position and found that when tuned up with an electronic tuner some chords sounded fine while others like a G sounded out of tune. I tried an experiment where I took a piece of stainless steel welding rod and cut a lenght that I fitted in contact with the nut on the fret board side to create a quick and dirty zero fret. It worked great! The guitar now sounds good in all chord positions.

The action is a bit high for my liking, but I'll address that by lowering the bridge when I replace the strings. The guitar comes out of the box with Elixer strings which I like a lot. This is an obvious place they could have trimed some expense, but they didn't.

This little guitar is about as good as it gets as far as materials, finish as craftmanship is concerned for the price. I would guess that it will hold up well over the years if not abused.

I've sent several emails to the Olympia Customer Service group and they have always responded quickly and answered my questions completely, beyond that I have not had any dealings with them.

I love this guitar and find that I play a lot more guitar now that I have it. I've been playing for 30 years and generally play rock/blues/jazz, but a full size guitar is not very comforable to lay on the couch and play for very long. The small size of this guitar and the fact that it is an acoustic invites one to pick it up often and noodle around on it for hours while watching TV or whatever. It's also a nice size for little guitar players if you some around your house.

3/4 size, spruce top, satin finish, mahogany back and sides, adjustable truss rod, bound fretboard, 18 frets.

I usually play rock, but i was looking for a little guitar I could sit and jam/write on without hauling around my electric and worrying about plugging it in and using all sorts of pedals. I tried out a lot of different 3/4 size guitars and this one sounds amazing. It has great depth to the sound and the body has a very nice resonance. It has a nice deep bass as well. In fact, the sound quality is better than some full size acoustics I looked at. As you'd expect with a 3/4 size it's not incredibly loud, but thats not why I bought it. Although with some heavy strumming you can get some good volume for such a little guitar.

The guitar is very easy to play. The medium action is a little high for my taste, but i've gotten used to it. The .012s naturally have to be higher than the .09s I'm running on my electric. The 18 fret fretboard joins the body at 12, which limits some of the higher stuff you can play. But, once again it's a 3/4 size, so it doesnt bother me.

I've been jamming on this little guy a lot more than I had expected and it's holding up very well. The tuners keep it in pretty good tune and the guitar itself has take a little abuse. I'm actually considering writing some acoustic parts into my songs so i have an excuse to play it at gigs. The sound quality is that good. Its lightweight, so I'd be careful throwing it around but with a decent gigbag it should be alright.

I've been playing for 6 years and this has become one of my new favorite guitars. Its always calling me to be played. Overall it's a fantastic value. Don't get me wrong, you get what you pay for. It's a $69 3/4 size guitar, so it obviously has it's limitations, but I've been more than happy with the purchase. It's the best $69 I've spent in a while.

This is a new Korean made, Tacoma designed 3/4 sized guitar. I think the name 'Parlor' is misleading since most Parlors I have seen have a larger body like a 0-sized Martin and a longer scale length. Its about the size of a Baby Taylor, though a little deeper, and thats no Parlor size.
It is all laminated wood with a gloss finish.
The tuners are utter crap, and the bridge may look like a real Tacoma, but its some kinda of plastic.
This is a KIDS guitar, don't believe all the 'Parlor' hype.

Well, you'd expect it too have a decent bass response due to its semi-deep body, but NO WAY. The bass sound like what you'd hear if you stuck strings on a shoebox, they thud and don't ring, very flat sounding.
The trebles are the same way, not lively at all which is NOT what I expected on a small-bodied guitar.
The Baby Taylor kills this thing in Bass, and Treble.
And oh yeah, even though the Olympia is slightly bigger, the Baby Taylor is MUCH Louder.
This definately doesn't have a rich full sound.
I've heard $30 no-name brand that sound better.

The frets are so sharp at the ends of the fretboard, it cuts fingers.
The action is about 1/2" off the fretboard at the 12th fret. Seriously.
I took the saddle out to trim it a bit, and there was about 1/16" of sawdust in the saddle slot.
The crappy plastic binding is already starting to peal off.
At least it came with Elixers, though I don't know why they spent the extra money.
The tuners are misaligned on the headstock and the bushing holes are way too big for the tuner bushings, they move around causing the guitar to not stay in tune.
This guitar looks good from a distance, but in your hands its just not so.

Its already falling apart, and I've only had it 2 months. I take care off all my gear too. The finish seems okay.
I would not be caught playing this TOY at a gig.

I've been playing for 18 years. I only 22 other guitars, and I wanted a travel guitar that could hold up, and this definately isn't the one. I also own a Baby Taylor, but my son has decided to keep it, so I bought this one for him.
I don't even recommend this guitar for kids, the frets are so sharp they will cut a childs hands easily.

Made in Indonesia.
12 open frets.
Solid Spruce top with a nice satin finish.
Frets need filed down.
Generic tuners work okay, but they feel and look cheap.
3/4 size guitar.
Neck width would good for both flatpicking and strumming. Not too wide or too skinny. Martin backpacker neck is much thinner.

I love the sound of this little guy. I play mostly acoustic rock and roll and folk.
Yes, it has a small sound, but 100% better than the Martin backpacker. This 3/4 size guitar is very deep for it's size, almost deep as my Washburn dreadnaught, and it gives it a "shoebox" kind of sound. Not tiny and tinny. I use it to take with me when I visit friends to go and practice with. It has a decent bass response also.

Guitar was set up excellent. Top wood looks good.
It has a few features that really surprised me, like an evenly radiused neck and very smooth binding.
Even the bracing on the inside is very nice glued.
I'm almost shocked by some of the features.
My only complaint is that the fretwire needs to be rounded off at the sides.

This a great durable little guitar. I haven't had to test it yet, but the workman ship feels very solid.

I don't know anything about it.

If you're looking for an easy playing small guitar to practice on, or travel with, this is it.
If it was stolen, I would buy another one in a flash.
At first I was really disappointed with the tuners, but now I realize they do the job just fine. Even if you're used to grovers looking past this detail is worth ith.

manufactured 2001, purchased december, 2001. olympia op-2 (it's a parlor style, smaller body - 3/4 i think). spruce top, satin finish. tuners are generic stamped, commonly found on guitars of this price range. neck is medium thickness, very comfortable. 18 frets, but 12th fret neck to body. the 12 fret neck to body doesn't bother me, it challenges you to be more creative in the first octave. it may be limiting for some players, so i'll take a point off my rating just to be fair.

out of the box this guitar would be great for a beginning child. the sound is well balanced for it's size.
i must confess, i work in a music store, so i had the opportunity to play all six in the shipment we got in. none of them sounded bad, but i took the one that i felt had the most bass response. all of them, however, sounded exceptional.
i play bluegrass and django style, and am having a lot of fun playing those styles on this guitar. obviously, i wouldn't recommend it over a martin d-28, but i would recommend it to someone looking for a parlor guitar.

the height at the nut was a bit too high, so i had to file the nut slots.
the height at the bridge was a bit too high, so i had to trim the saddle.
it comes with elixir strings, .012's (lights). the .012's on this scale length feels very light. playing bluegrass, i'm used to the feel of medium gauge strings. to equal that feel, i had to string it with acoustic heavy's (.014's). naturally, it needed a neck adjustment after this tremendous change in string tension, which i applied. before i put the heavy strings on, however, the neck was perfect.
any good shop should be willing to make these adjustments for you, free of charge, when you buy the guitar. well, at least we do at my shop!
before these changes were made, i'd rate the guitar with an 8.
after, with a 10.

i really bought this guitar to be a beach guitar or campfire guitar. so i can't say if i'll gig with it yet.
to gig with it, the tuners would have to be changed. they may work now, but it's my experience that you cannot rely on this type of tuning machine - i've watched too many of my students struggle to keep their entry-level guitars in tune.
if i changed the tuners, and installed an under-the-saddle pickup, then i would start to consider using it on a gig. without these chnges, it is doubtful. it serves it's purpose quite well for now, though.