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Martin released a new guitar with "innovative" features that their marketing department is going to town with one of which is "Sonic Channels" which are grooves routed into the top and back along both sides of every brace and around the perimeter of the plates. These channels are claimed to increase vibrational amplitude in some way that's presumably beneficial somehow.

This raises lots of questions for me, but the most basic one is does this make sense in some way? Taylor has routed a channel around the perimeter of the lower bout on their guitars for years as a way to loosen the top at the edge which is similar to how many builders thin the top toward the edge by more traditional means. But Martin is routing a channel around every single brace and the bridge plate. Does doing this make sense from a mechanical or engineering point of view?

And then there are the weight relieved x-braces which somehow improve "air flow".

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

This is one of the reasons why I suggested Martin is no longer doing tours there is a LOT happening there in the way of innovation with multiple new models that stray very far from traditional Martins.

Once again we see innovation that was first seen on small builder instruments, weight relieved (drilled out if you will) braces and such. Can You say Kevin Ryan and some others too.

So as for the channels I'll say something you don't hear a lot these days on this forum - I don't know. And no one here is going to know about the channels without the data that Martin likely has from testing. Reminds me of the doors on the Russian submarine in Hunt For Red October but I digress.

So my mind when I first saw this some weeks ago went where J's did to Taylors perimeter rabbit engineered to loosen up the top.

Not to be a Debbie Downer but the top looks massively over braced to me from here and from what I saw a couple of weeks ago. I probably should not say anything though because I lack all the facts such as top thickness, etc.

As someone who has been fond of saying "build traditionally like Martin" I may have to come up with a new line.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Wow, all that "innovation" and they still cover their crappy, ill-fitting pre-shaped x-brace joint with linen, awesome.
That innovation was lost on me as well....

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Thanks! I really needed a belly laugh this morning!

M

Gah…. Looks like you could drive over it w a car! Braces look wicked tall to me. That said….. I wonder if the mass removed is equal to the additional mass of the bigger braces.

Being a hobby builder… I think it LOOKS neat, but I question the affect on the sound.

I’d like to see those braces undergo a test w normal ones…. See if they have worked it out to be just as strong despite the holes


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That got me chuckling too Karl thank You!

Of course we can't dig them up and ask them, well we could but they might smell... but who came up with the cloth patch on the X-intersection likely wanted a tad of weakness and flex as the X-intersection is a force multiplier (wrong term) in that area making it very stiff. Or, in other words I think the crappy X-joint is intensional and always was. I'm guessing though based on how well it works it does stay together and it does permit some flex where the alternative is much stiffer.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

As always, I prefer to wait and see how they turn out in a couple years. I think Andy Powers new bracing is over-rated, and this might be, too. It could be the case of doing something different to influence the market into thinking that progress is being made...

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Seems like the opposite of engineering to me... reducing stiffness without reducing weight. I'd call that a kerfed soundboard.

I sure those channels will never cause cracks. Stress risers? Never heard of them.

This is what happens when the marketing department takes over.

Read something today about their new CEO virtue signalling about them starting to use sustainable woods such as walnut and maple. Nothing wrong with those woods but the guitar industry uses a miniscule amount of exotics compared to the furniture etc. industries. Seems to be some degradation happening there but could be wrong. I hope.

Could be some good drainage though in the case of a flood.

Martin's published test results with imfo - https://www.martinguitar.com/series-inception.html?utm_source=social&utm_medium=instagram&utm_campaign=namm_2024&utm_term=organic
Some comparisons on youtube.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Bracing and sonic channels aside - I have to say I do appreciate Martin leaning in on the domestic hardwood angle. That’s good for all of us.


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Hey, as long as they’re increasing resonance and sustain, I’m down. Especially since they’re increasing airflow. Increased airflow is where it’s at!

I agree Dennis only you're more eloquent than me when I saw it my initial reaction was WTF....

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I hate virtue signaling and call it out too when I see it so I can relate Darrel. I ran into someone who can't even have a bone nut on his guitar because it came from a living thing. Sheesh... I reminded him that wood grows on trees, living things and ruined his day.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

A bar chart that looks like it was created by marketing people and lacks any supporting information other than saying spectral analysis was used can hide a multitude of sins and technical failings. They put in the word "control" to make it look all sciencey and therefore more credible but don't say what the control was. It certainly wasn't the same guitar with standard bracing versus "skeletonized" bracing +"sonic channels". So what was it? How many guitars were compared to collect data? No idea. So I don't have any reason to take those numbers seriously. If someone is going to start bandying about words like "control" then they had better follow through with the relevant supporting information to be credible. But that's me coming from a science background and a long stint in biotech where I saw marketing people take numbers and twist them into pretzels to support a story they wanted to tell. Without the supporting info, the numbers in that chart don't tell me anything compelling. They are just part of a marketing campaign.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I love Martin, but I cringe when I consider some of their other marketing efforts. Have you ever watched those YouTube videos produced by Martin where someone talks about how superior a dovetail joint is for the tone of a guitar? Apologies to anyone on the OLF who thinks that is true, but it really isn’t. Dovetails are great neck joints, but the myth of it having better tone than other solid neck joints is well debunked by now. Saying this stuff in marketing campaigns is just cynical pandering to certain buyers, and it lessens the company in my esteem when I see them do it.

Oh my.

All of the bracing together amounts to about 25%- 30% of the total weight of the top. I'd be surprised if that 'skeletenized' bracing saves more than 10% of the brace weight, and it's probably closer to 5%. That's 10% of 25% of the top weight, or 2.5% of the total. You'd do better to use lower density wood for the top instead of stuff like Red ('Adirondack') or Sitka spruce. As for air flow: all of those edges will kill that. A lute rose can reduce the output of the 'main air' resonance to almost nothing due to the drag; see 'feedback busters'.

The channels that Taylor uses were based, in part, of research going back to the 60s by folks in the Catgut Acoustical Society. It's based on the effect that you get when the purfling around the edge of the fiddle gets loose, converting the edge from a 'pinned' condition to a sort of 'stiff hinge'.

It's hard to see how doing that around the braces gets you anythings. Properly done bracing is there to stiffen the top, and isolating it from the rest of the top doesn't make much sense to me. OTOH, a production outfit like Martin can't take the time to get the braces balanced to each different top, and this might help on average.

How thick is that bridge plate? Is it hardwood, or spruce with a hard 'cap'?

Oh yeah: I've seen testimonials from repair folks claiming that a linen patch actually works better than a wood one. It's at least better than nothing. We have to allow the former bastion of tradition some leeway in this...

No telling if what they’re doing will work from a player perspective. They say it’s all about sound but I would say they are likely more focused on sales, manufacturability and reducing warranty work. The report reeks of pseudo-science. Color me a skeptic.


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

SCEPTIC!

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I agree and give Martin credit for their focus on using North American woods for this guitar. But they manage to undermine that effort with their marketing for this guitar by perpetuating the myth that maple is a bad tonewood for the back and sides of flat top acoustic guitars and by claiming that they fixed this supposed problem by making the center wedge of the three-piece back out of walnut. Yea, sure.

They are using wood binding on this guitar which kills two birds with one stone. It eliminates plastic (one of their stated goals for this guitar) and should take care of the chronic loose binding problem they've been having for the past decade or so.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Imagine having a problem you know about for a decade without changing.

But look at all that TRADITION (plastic binding that falls off).

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Peter Havriluk