Kind of return of an old friend
Posted: Sun May 26, 2019 12:37 pm
In 1995 or whatever I got together the money and got my first real acoustic, a nice Martin D-1 that they were making in those days. It was a ton of money to me at the time, I was working like sixty, seventy hours a week in the kitchen and it still seemed to take me forever to get it out of layaway.
But when I did, I absolutely fell in love with it, and I played it all the time from that point on. I look back on a lot of wonderful days having done nothing more than laid around playing this guitar, and it, along with my Japanese Jazzmaster and my G&L L-1000 became the three instruments that I never would let go and that formed the core three of instruments that I felt I needed. Other things came and went, some arguably "better", but I never bonded with them like I did those three. You probably know how it is.
Anyway, some years ago I got some other acoustics that I preferred to the Martin, and I laid the Martin up. I guess eighteen years of playing the same guitar I wanted a change, and I forgot about the Martin. Then I let a friend borrow if for half a year or so, and when I got it back from her I put it up again, then one day I pulled it out and was like, I don't remember the action being this high on the guitar, man, this sucks.
But what was happening was that the neck was pulling away from the body, you could have put a quarter in between the neck and the rear bout of where it was pulling away.
So, I pulled the strings off, and put it away again, wondering if I would need a full neck reset, wondering if I would pay that much if I did.
I finally got around to taking it into the show, and lo and behold, I only needed the neck pulled off a little bit and then glued back down. This model uses a mortise and tenon technique to attach the neck to the body, instead of the more elaborate dovetail, this was one of the ways that Martin saved money on this entry level model (this guitar was sold for under $1k and was the cheapest Martin at the time).
This also means that the neck is bolted on and glued, the bolt holds the neck on while the glue sets. This also means that Martin used a different bracing pattern than their traditional X bracing, something called "A bracing", which you can read about here.
It's always been a very lively sounding and good sounding guitar- with the exception of when I cracked the top, which killed the sound, but it came back after I had it repaired. I've certainly been rough with this guitar.
But, it sounds great, and I am going to treat it to a new bone saddle and bridge pins. It very much has that Martin sound, which is making me wonder why I don't own more Martins and thats's a dangerous thing...
But when I did, I absolutely fell in love with it, and I played it all the time from that point on. I look back on a lot of wonderful days having done nothing more than laid around playing this guitar, and it, along with my Japanese Jazzmaster and my G&L L-1000 became the three instruments that I never would let go and that formed the core three of instruments that I felt I needed. Other things came and went, some arguably "better", but I never bonded with them like I did those three. You probably know how it is.
Anyway, some years ago I got some other acoustics that I preferred to the Martin, and I laid the Martin up. I guess eighteen years of playing the same guitar I wanted a change, and I forgot about the Martin. Then I let a friend borrow if for half a year or so, and when I got it back from her I put it up again, then one day I pulled it out and was like, I don't remember the action being this high on the guitar, man, this sucks.
But what was happening was that the neck was pulling away from the body, you could have put a quarter in between the neck and the rear bout of where it was pulling away.
So, I pulled the strings off, and put it away again, wondering if I would need a full neck reset, wondering if I would pay that much if I did.
I finally got around to taking it into the show, and lo and behold, I only needed the neck pulled off a little bit and then glued back down. This model uses a mortise and tenon technique to attach the neck to the body, instead of the more elaborate dovetail, this was one of the ways that Martin saved money on this entry level model (this guitar was sold for under $1k and was the cheapest Martin at the time).
This also means that the neck is bolted on and glued, the bolt holds the neck on while the glue sets. This also means that Martin used a different bracing pattern than their traditional X bracing, something called "A bracing", which you can read about here.
It's always been a very lively sounding and good sounding guitar- with the exception of when I cracked the top, which killed the sound, but it came back after I had it repaired. I've certainly been rough with this guitar.
But, it sounds great, and I am going to treat it to a new bone saddle and bridge pins. It very much has that Martin sound, which is making me wonder why I don't own more Martins and thats's a dangerous thing...