Extremely rare Martin 000-18 from 1931, in original condition and incredible preservation.
The early 1930s in Nazareth were marked by a series of changes that would be fundamental for Martin’s future: the introduction to the catalog of the new style D for dreadnought – a guitar with an increased body size in a landscape mainly populated by parlor guitars and 0 and 00s -, the promulgation of the OM style (for Orchestra Model), an evolution based on the 000 shape which now featured a neck with a neck joined to the body at the 14th fret, also marking the definitive transition from gut strings to steel strings involving a revision of the construction of the bracing and bridge…
The guitar presented here appears in the midst of all this turmoil as a rare example of what can be considered the traditional shape of the Martin guitar, still designated in the catalog as the No. 000-18 Auditorium style: spruce top, mahogany back, sides and neck, ebony bridge and fingerboard, rosewood headstock veneer; the neck features a relatively wide nut, a junction with the body at the 12th fret, and a hollow headstock; the body proportions differ from those of later models, namely the upper lobes are narrower and the body length is greater; the bridge has a shape known as a belly bridge, a development introduced in 1929 to replace the straight or pyramidal bridge used previously – this new design allows a larger surface area for gluing on the soundboard, providing more resistance to the tension of the steel strings; the fingerboard features bar frets, traditionally used in guitar making from the early days of metal fretwork until Martin introduced modern T-frets in 1934; the guitar predates the appearance of the decal logo, and as such it only has the Martin brand stamped on the back of the headstock. Wide grain spruce top, mahogany back, sides and neck, ebony fingerboard, Rio rosewood headstock veneer complete the construction characteristics. The original Waverley tuners are still present on the guitar, as are the original ebony bridge and celluloid pickguard. So we have this timeless Martin model built to extremely rare specifications, since Auditorium size instruments were produced at most at a rate of one or two hundred copies per year before the 1930s for mahogany instruments, and a few dozen for rosewood instruments!
Sold in an older fitted hardshell case.
SOLD
