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Martin Guitars: An Illustrated Celebration of America's Premier Guitarmaker Foreword by Stephen Stills They say it's the wood. They say it's the drying technique, that it's the glue, the resins, or the finish. They say it's the aging. They say it's the scalloped braces or the step of the neck (like a boat). They say it's the regularity of the grain in the fretboard. They say it's the cross-grain ripple to the spruce. They say it's the density of the rosewood. They say it's the precision of the joining braces. They say it's the binding. They say it's a hype, a tradition marketed. |
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They're all right, but they're all wrong. They left out one major element. It's the magic It's one guy thumping and caressing and sanding and picking out what fits together, and steaming and molding and drying and waiting and touching and knowing when to do what. Everyone has tried to mass produce it. They think machine-tooled, x-rayed, laser-calibrated, mathematically perfect impersonations of the old craft will fly, and they are always wrong. What is it that none of them get? It's the old craft. Like the Stradivarius violins, violas and celli produced by craftsmen 400 years ago, Martin guitars - particularly those created between 1900 and 1945 - are masterpieces |
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of carefully chosen woods and handcrafted elegance. Light as a feather, so finely tuned as to demand the most of a player, they respond with an authority that leaves nothing unexposed. They have a crystalline high end that resonates with the purity of a waterfall in a mountain stream. The mid-range produces overtones that can fill a theatre with no amplification. The bass is so rich it can overwhelm any microphone and is best enjoyed live. Press your ear against the side of one, right above the waist, so that your head is in direct contact with the wood, and you think you're in a cathedral. I have had the distinct honor of becoming intimately acquainted with 15 of these exquisite instruments, and to my mind they are all among the finest examples of the luthier's art form in existence. Each one has its own singular voice, as distinctive and individually unique as the features of a human face. Yet they were so delicately crafted that each could, as was intended, mold itself and adjust its response to the touch and expressiveness of the musician into whose hands it fell, becoming a true extension of the players personality and the inspiring conduit of a creative artist's passion. Having been on the receiving end of an entire career's worth of such inspiration, I shall remain forever indebted to C.F. Martin and all of his works and to all the artisans that followed him at C.F. Martin & Company. These people carefully and deliberately conspired to provide me and every other artist fortunate enough to have laid hands on one of their creations with the opportunity to give voice to our very souls. Accompanied, as we have been, by the voice of God. Stephen Stills
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